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WP:PUI is hugely backlogged, all the way back to July. A lot of the photos are in limbo due to uncertainty about their copyright status because no one knows the relevant law. (For example, can a photo of the Cinderella castle in Disneyland be released under a free license, or is it a derivative work? There are also a fair amount of unanswered questions about international copyrights.) If any editors want to go through the old pages (linked under the "log pages" section) and put in their two cents, that would be great... and it would be even better if other admins could help with the deleting. Thanks! Calliopejen1 20:54, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
The notion that these images should be automatically deleted is far too presumptive, IMO, to allow sustainable maintenance of reasonable good-faith interrelationships among users across the wiki. One of the things that is conspicuously lacking here is proper notice. Take a look, for example, at Image:Bristol_Buckingham.jpg, uploaded three years ago with a statement of source and a reasonable justification for why it's in the public domain. Now look at the article in which it's been used for quite some time, Bristol_Buckingham. Now look at Talk:Bristol_Buckingham. Where's the notice that the hawks are circling around this prey? There is a notice on the uploader's talk page, but that uploader hasn't been involved in the article on Bristol_Buckingham for over three years, and has moved on to other things, presumably thinking that the article on Bristol Buckingham is taken care of and it's time to move onto other things. Fortunately, the uploader is still regularly active three years after the upload. But what about the widespread cases where the uploader is either no longer involved or doesn't check in regularly? And, I should add, that there have been a number of contributors to this article on Bristol Buckinham as seen in the revision history, but no apparent need for use of the talk page to get the article to its present state. This is just a sample of the reasons that the attitude or assumption "they had all the chances in the world to fix it" does not accurately represent the situations that occur across the wiki, and is not, under the present methods, sustainable policy-- not, at least, without making further messes of mutual good will built in the last several years across the wiki. Just figured I should mention some of these things.. ... Kenosis 04:48, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Carcaroth, fairly kindly, says "ReyBrujo and Kenosis are both right here". Of course, each may well be "right" (whatever "right" is) from different perspectives. I'm mainly concerned about the difference in perspectives w.r.t. the efforts to efficiently and expediently delete images deemed offensive by some, whether because they're "non-free", or tagged as questionable in some way, or alleged to be inadequately verified as to their status (when in fact many such images are adequately verified), and a host of other complaints. These are not, IMO, proper justifications for mass deletions, nor are they proper justifications for massive manual cleanup efforts.
........ Among many other things, this is not, as ReyBrujo said, an "ultimate truth" we're dealing with here. And I sincerely hope it's not anyone's ultimate truth -- I merely take it as ReyBrujo's expression of frustration arising out of a perception of excessive accumulation and delay in achieving this aspect of previously formed set of goals. Far from being an ultimate truth or ultimate solution, this all is a work in progress where there is a very significant lag time in many different maintenance tasks, between the time when the insertion or initial formation of particular material into the wiki (in this case images and other media files), and then the time at which someone identifying the tasks perceived by the user placing the maintenance tag to be needed, and then later, perhaps much later, to the actual fulfillment of the maintenance tasks. This lengthy lag time is not limited to media files. Drive-by "unreferenced" templates and "needs more verification" tags have become increasingly common on the wiki too. People get to thinking that the whole wiki isn't adequately sourced, and go 'round placing tags. Thus the question of "who will do the actual work?" comes into play in many areas, not just w.r.t. images and not just w.r.t. deletion of material that someone has questioned by placing a maintenance tag on it. These lengthy lag times are, IMO, an inevitable part of dealing with the material in an open-source wiki such as WP.
........ But, a mass effort or automated effort to "take out the trash" that presumes the goal is "deletion", or that presumes the goal is "only free content", or other narrowly focused effort, has shown itself recently to be capable of doing more harm than good. We've seen visible evidence of this already, people leaving the wiki in disgust specifically because of the fights over these things, with many reasonable, clearly competent users making many statements to the effect that they feel either unfairly treated or caught in the middle of something irrational. We can only guess and extrapolate how much we've been unable to observe. Of course images can be replaced -- so can virtually any content presently on the wiki, in theory at least. But the procedure by which the stuff is removed is extremely important in maintaining good will among users on the wiki. If this aspect of cleanup efforts is not respectful of user contributions to existing articles, with a process that users at the local level can tend to agree essentially "well, collectively we admit we were treated fairly on that issue", the cost could forseeably greatly outweigh the benefits here -- assuming it hasn't already begun to do that.
........ As I've pointed out before, roughly nine out of ten IfDs go uncontested or only mildly contested. That appears to be fairly closely in keeping with Jimbo Wales' statement that 90% of the NFC on the wiki is unnecessary. IMO, no need to get ballistic about the remainder, at least not under the present circumstances. Presently, as I said, we need to get notice to the appropriate users that the images in articles they've worked on are in potential jeopardy, be it in 7 days, or 7 years. Adequate notice, with a reasonable time to respond after adequate notice is provided, plainly is one of the key affirmative steps that can be taken in this quarter of the wiki, a step that lends itself both towards removing images that arguably are copyright violations (up to and including free-licensed images whose origin is not reasonably well verifiable), and also lends itself towards a better sense of having been treated fairly in the process. After that's addressed and implemented, dealing with backlogs potentially becomes a more soluble discussion, IMO, where certain additional kinds of automated deletion can more reasonably come into play. . ...
Kenosis
16:00, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I have been doing copyright searches on magazine covers and have found the many are in the public domain. Most of the pre 1964 Ziff-Davis Publishing and Gernsback Publications were not renewed and are in the public domain. If a few cases a magazine was sold; and the new copyright holder renewed some issues. Amazing Stories issues around 1955 are an example.
The March 1961 through January 1964 issues of Electronics Illustrated by Fawcett Publications were not renewed and are in the public domain. After a series of buyouts and mergers, someone forgot about renewing the out of print titles. For more details see here: Talk:Electronics_Illustrated#Copyright_renewal
I am interested in hobbyist electronics magazines such as Radio Electronics and Popular Electronics. Because the pre 1964 issues are public domain; I have been able to change about half of my Fair Use magazine covers to public domain.
When I changed the license to PD-US-not renewed I left all of the information for Fair Use in the image description. This is in case a future revision of NFCC requires a certified letter from the Register of Copyright, Marybeth Peters, attesting to the lack of a copyright renewal. These images would be easy to change back to Fair Use while waiting for the letter.
I am interested in comments about these two magazine covers. Is this sufficient proof of PD-US-not renewed? I have a few more of my images to convert plus magazine covers others have uploaded.
I have been spending way to much time following the latest Fair Use requirements and fine-tuning the image description pages. I would like to spend more time adding content and improving my articles. (My prose could use that.) I hope that my asking for comment here on NFC doesn't result in a speedy delete of all of my images because of a minor technical detail.
SWTPC6800 02:33, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
The magazine publishing world has always had a lot of buying and selling of titles. In the case of Electronics Illustrated, I doubt that anyone at Hachette Filipacchi Media knows anything about the magazine. Electronics Illustrated was absorbed into Mechanix Illustrated in November 1972. Mechanix Illustrated became Home Mechanix in 1985. After the Diamandis Communications leveraged buyout, Home Mechanix was sold to Times Mirror Magazines. Diamandis continued to renew the copyrights on Electronics Illustrated until they were acquired by Hachette. In all of the merger confusion the copyright renewal stopped. These companies are not going to do a forensic search to determine what happened. We have positive proof that the copyright renewals stopped and the issues are in public domain.
SWTPC6800
14:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Electronics Illustrated did not identify the cover photographers on the early issues. They started giving credits around 1963. None of the issues that I have give a separate copyright notice for the cover photo. The Radio News cover appears to be by a staff illustrator. David Hymes did every cover for two years in the early 1930s. I do not upload covers with celebrities, the first Radio News published by Ziff-Davis (April 1938) has Lucille Ball on the cover. I would believe that one could have a photographer or studio copyright. If no notice or credit is given, we should be able to assume the cover is a work for hire. You had to actively claim a copyright before 1978. -- SWTPC6800 17:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Some more results from my brief survey of Category:Images with unknown source. Image:Stonebw01.jpg and Image:Draug.jpg have been tracked down. When it is taking too long, or the image is poor quality or not needed (others already in articles) I move on. Sometimes, though, there are annoying cases of pictures obviously scanned from a book, obviously old and PD, but not enough information to save them. One example (this one's not obviously PD) is Image:Mortimer Lewis Main Block of Asylum built 1837-8.jpg (an asylum in Gladesville, NSW, Australia). The uploader didn't give any information, and vanished after uploading. I looked up Mortimer Lewis and found a nice biography here. I was tempted to start an article at Mortimer William Lewis, but then realised that I had no way of finding out the source of that picture. :-( Carcharoth 20:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Can envelopes and other items of stationery have copyrights applied? The image in question is Image:3letter.jpg. Would copyright apply to that? It's probably old enough to be PD-US anyway, but I thought I'd check. Carcharoth 01:41, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I have begun a conversation with User:Rich Farmbrough, Misza13 and Betacommand about automating the basic type of tally that Betacommand recently compiled here. The objective is to keep a periodic automated tally of licencing template usage, particularly but not necessarily limited to NFC tags and public domain tags, in such a way that interested participants can keep tabs on template usage. Ideally, I think, something that will allow trend lines to be displayed for usage of each template will assist the project in discerning usage trends and the distribution of standard rationales across different classifications of images and other media files.
Just wanted to keep everybody here apprised that I received a response from both Rich Farmbrough and Misza13 and left a note about it on Betacommand's talk page. The beginning threads about this are at User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers (with a brief response on my talk page User talk:Kenosis#Bot requirements), ( User_talk:Misza13#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers, and User_talk:Betacommand#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers. ... Kenosis 15:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
For start, I have begun moving my tools to my toolserver repository. So far I have put the category tracker, spoiler tracker and image deletion bots. Миша 13 17:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
In a similar vein, I found Image:Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo.jpg and with this edit I tidied up the image page and removed a "no sources" tag. There is an interesting history there, though. Put yourself in the shoes of User:Jacopock. Look over his contributions here, and his uploads here, and settle down and read the following story.
Jacopock created his account at 18:11, 23 September 2007, and two minutes later dumped an essay on Wikipedia with this edit (18:13), and then made this experiment at adding an image (18:18). This was followed by three attempts to upload the same picture (all three were uploaded), possibly just attempting to get the upload name correct (18:22 for Image:Arcenio.jpg, 18:25 for Image:Arsenio de carpo.jpg, and 18:29 for Image:Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo.jpg). The trail then goes cold. No more contributions. Possibly the user failed to work out how to get images to display and gave up in disgust.
The next part of the story concerns User:OrphanBot, who, noticing that Jacopock had failed to give the images a license tag, comes along and tags them as needing more information (otherwise they will "be deleted within 7 days"). OrphanBot also leaves a message at User talk:Jacopock (at 19:06). In fact, OrphanBot's message is one of the better written and more polite bot messages, but still, I'm never quite sure how people react to being (effectively) greeted by a bot.
At this point (well, around 3 hours later), I enter the story. I was browsing Category:Images with unknown source as of 23 September 2007 and the faded brown paper of a scan of an old image caught my eye. I investigated and discovered an interesting article at Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo (well, when I first saw it, it was hardly an article). After checking to see if it was a copyvio (doesn't seem to be) or if it was a hoax (again, seems to be genuine), I set about tidying up the image and article, with my first step being to add the image to the article (21:54). I then tidied up the image and removed the bot-added tag (pending more information), some 6 minutes later. I then welcomed Jacopock with a template, and followed up with a specific message asking for image and article sources.
Over the next hour or so, I tidied up the article, changing it from this to this. Mostly pretty standard wiki-linking and copyediting, with a fair bit of work still to do, though hopefully others will help. This did get me wondering though about how WP:BITEy it is for new users, struggling to upload images and get them to work, to get a bot notice on their talk page. The message might be polite and helpful, but it is hardly friendly. I realise that Jackopock might only have been interested in depositing an essay on Wikipedia, but maybe a more friendly approach could encourage more people to continue to contribute? One thing that might help is to get the image bots to put {{ welcome}} on the pages of new users before adding notices about images. How easy would it be to do that?
Finally, the image would likely have been deleted after a week, when in fact it was a perfectly OK image. It was just an all too common case of a user not really understanding what to do. New users sometimes don't edit for periods of several days. Maybe a week is too short a time for new users to learn about how Wikipedia works. Surely there must be a better way to handle things than this? Carcharoth 23:52, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
These two sentences seem to say very similar things. Can they be conflated somehow?
"Where possible, non-free content is transformed into free material instead of using a fair-use defense. Non-free content is always replaced with a freer alternative if one of acceptable quality is available."
Is this "free" vs. "freer"? Why "transformed" and then "replaced"? This language should be a straighforward as possible. Tony (talk) 03:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
As I was looking through Category:Images with unknown source (and I assume that this applies to Category:Images with unknown copyright status), I noticed a lot of logos up for deletion as not having a source. One example: Image:Byuhlogo.jpg ... so, it is a logo for BYU Hawaii ... I'm pretty sure the source is just going to be BYU Hawaii's website.
Lately we (including myself) have been getting stricter on lack of sources, and we now have bots that can fairly accurately detect when there is no source and tag the image as such. Problem is, logos, album covers and books don't a priori need a source written down. I've seen many editors say, "I didn't write down the source because it is obvious!11!!11 The source is the book/album/company website/company letterhead/etc." And I agree; in most cases w.r.t. logos, album covers, and book covers, it is obvious.
I guess we should decide on what the spirit of the source-requirement is ... is it that every image must have a source and, even if it could easily be saved by someone who instead automatically tags it, it should be deleted? Or is it that we need to actively prevent plagiarism, copyright violations, and also mistakes by (mostly) newbie editors, and, since it is obvious (or would be a trivial search) who holds the copyright to a logo, book cover, and album cover, a source should not be a reason to delete an image.
If the latter, I would like to change the {{ no source}} and {{ no copyright}} (or whatever the templates are now) accordingly...but that won't solve the problem of the bots who tag images with no source automatically. What do you all think? -- Iamunknown 14:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the same logic can be applied animal actors as can be applied to human actors when it comes to non-free images, if not more so. We have not just one, but four non-free images on Porthos (Star Trek). Normally I'd think this is a no brainer and just remove the images, but I suspect it might be "controversial", so I'll ask here first. -- Ned Scott 06:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
And there you go. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 and had illustrations. The primary illustration for Toto (dog) should be an illustration from the first edition of the book. Then an adaptations section can deal with the portrayal of the dog in different adaptations of the book, with or without images as the case may be. But honestly, if people promoting free content think that a free image of a dog born in 1933 can be used to illustrate an article about a character from a book published in 1900, then they are really missing the point. Getting the correct encyclopedic image must come before free/non-free concerns. Otherwise you just start to mislead readers. Carcharoth 20:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Picking up on something Carl said above: "The image in the article is illustrating the dog from the movie, which is a very well known movie after all. So it's not a poor choice of image. " - surely you are joking? The correct use for such an image would be in the film. ie. in The Wizard of Oz (1939 film). It is misleading to put, up front, a picture of an actor from a film, to illustrate an article on a character from a book. Period. There are no two ways about it. Carcharoth 20:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I am announcing a proposal to change certain aspects of WP:NFCC#10, the part of policy about image description pages. This proposal would simplify the data required on image description pages of nonfree images. It would also allow for certain common use rationales (like a book cover image on the article about the book) to be obtained from templates.
The proposal does not change any other part of the nonfree content criteria. But, as conversation on this talk page indicates, making the image description pages easier to format correctly would make it easier to bring images into compliance and make it easier to detect new images that don't provide required information.
The proposal is at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal and its talk page is Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria/Proposal. This proposal was developed by conversation among User:Anetode, User:Betacommand, User:Wikidemo and me. We hope others will look over it and discuss it on the associated talk page. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I want to start a new discussion regarding DVD cover art. IMHO I think adding these to relevant articles with proper references and identification should be perfectly acceptable. It would be no different then Amazon.com or other websites using cover images. It helps articles particularly those with DVD sections and tables. I've seen them particularly helpful in seeing different the different DVD region covers. What would it take to modify WP:FU to include this?? Thanks FrankWilliams 17:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Kenosis used the phrase "different releases of the same work" - I think the terms commonly used are "editions", "releases", "adaptations" and "remakes" (plus some others, probably). The Planet of the Apes examples are remakes inspired by the original film. You also have spin-offs and sequels. Adaptations would be something like the examples in Category:Middle-earth adaptations, where you have films, radio dramas, and theatrical adaptations of the original story (a book), and also various games and parodies based on or inspired by the original story. This is why something like Frodo#Adaptations is arguably a good fair-use use of a gallery. The gallery accompanies text about the different portrayal of Frodo in different adaptations, rather than being different releases of the same work (5 pics of Frodo from the same film). Another example is Cleopatra (film). Well, it was, but I see that the image I was intending to use as an example, Image:Films named cleopatra.JPG, has been speedily deleted. I think I wrote the fair-use rationale for that - can someone look at the deleted revisions and check that? The image showed posters/covers for three different Cleopatra films, and did a good job, IMO, of illustrating the topic. Also, consider Image:1665 phil trans vol i title.png and Image:RSTB 362 1479 thumbnail.jpg. Same product? In some senses, yes, in other senses, no. Then look at Image:HMCoSecondEdHobbits.jpg. Same product being illustrated 11 times, but a definite reason for the image, unrelated to the normal reason for using an image of a book cover. Carcharoth 21:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Gentlemen what I've been arguing is what Wikidemo just said above. "Cover art of CDs, DVDs, books, etc., is generally allowable on Wikipedia (and covered by fair use) for purposes of identifying the work in question. I was identifying the DVD's via their covers in the appropriate articles which were clearly mentioned. Editors such as Arcayne have argued that this is not enough and that "Critical Commentary" are needed to justify the covers. Is "Critical Commentary" a necessary criteria?? If so why; and it can it be changed? I again use Amazon.com as an example. The fact they selling the items doesn't matter; they are "identifying" the product just as I was doing in the wiki articles. What's the difference? Just as Wikidemo says above "Publishers, distributors, and creators use covers as the primary means to visually identify and brand their works because humans are visual creatures; we use to identify article subjects for a similar purpose." AGREED. FrankWilliams 15:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I stand correct, thanks Wikidemo. Gentlepeople, agreed, what I would like to do is have a sample DVD cover for each of the five seasons in the Miami Vice article. The pics are small and obtrusive and would be at the end of the article. Anyone have any problems with this? I gues under what Wikidemo says I'd be looking for an exception. FrankWilliams 18:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, where do we go from here. Wikidemo you seem to have the most knowledge in this area. What would we need to do to show six images in the DVD section of the Miami Vice article? Do the rules need to be modified or just grant an exception? Thanks FrankWilliams 12:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
However, the artwork of the DVd has to be noted and notable for inclusion, right? Otherwise, it's just decorative eye-candy. That has pretty much been the rule thus far. If the the text doesn't specifically refer to why that particular image is vitally important to have in the article, then it shouldn't be there. Thoughts? - Arcayne (cast a spell) 14:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
DVD cover art is unacceptable per #8 of WP:NFC since the title screen for the TV show is already used as the identifying image. There is zero indication that "its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding." This should be done by providing actual content about the DVD cover itself. It is not impossible -- there has been notable DVD packaging like Memento and Evil Dead. It's a matter of direct commentary on the cover art, otherwise the images are just decorative. Miami Vice seems formatted that there is a possible consensus to include all DVD covers, which is ridiculous. Why is even one acceptable, if it does not meet #8 in the slightest? This is an encyclopedia, and images should be incorporated in an encyclopedic fashion. The vast, vast majority of media has some kind of cover, or even multiple covers, but we do not (or we try not to) drown media articles in images of them because they have no bearing on the article. The DVD release table is perfectly sufficient without the use of images. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 16:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I've been plowing through CSD today, including a whole bunch of I3's - images uploaded as non commercial use only, educational use only, or for Wikipedia only. One of the license options we give people is that the creator has licensed this work for use on Wikipedia. It seems to me that this would suggest to the uploader that a non-commerical use only, educational use only, or Wikipedia use only image is okay. Then they upload their image and are immediately greeting with a massive tag telling them they fucked up. Since these images are not acceptable, this begs the question why allow people to select this tag in the first place? I understand that some non-com images are okay under a fair use guideline, but why not just immediately jump to the fair use rationale, instead of giving the impression that non-com images are okay? This just does not make sense to me. Natalie 23:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
[rant mode on] No, our forms shouldn't save images in a way that applies a giant "TO BE DELETED" warning. Our forms shouldn't save those images at all. For that matter, "lying to the computer" shouldn't matter either, because every image upload ought to be checked by hand to verify that the description has enough elements present to establish the validity of the license (i.e. sourcing, etc.). If Wikipedia were really serious about ensuring copyright validity, even GFDL-self and similar claims would require verification in the form of the uploader's name and contact information. If you want to be serious about respecting copyrights then you should really be serious about it. Mucking around with licensing "traps" is no substitute for actually validating the legitimacy of uploads. [end rant mode]. 136.152.153.227 23:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
includescript(...)
call. Once a "winner" is selected and has been properly polished and debugged we can then install it in the global script to make it run for everyone by default. If someone disables scripting they will simply get the standard "old" upload form, so no big danger there. --
Sherool
(talk)
19:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)Where should the description of the original copyright holder go in the image article? In the source section or in the description section? WP:NFCC#10 doesn't make this clear. Thanks. Merlin1981 01:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Due to renewed and consecutive deletions of images that I had uploaded I will significantly reduce the time I spent in the last year working for English and German Wikipedia.
I have only uploaded images that were accepted as "fair use" in the first place and images where I had allowance by the copyright holders.
For explanation I give these two examples.
(1) The article Website Pros had a picture of their headquarter in Jacksonville, Florida. It was taken from the website of the company. The image was deleted with the argument, "a free substitute can be created". The logic of this is astonishing. Do you expect me to travel from Germany to Florida to take a snapshot of this building? Yes, anyone else can, but nobody else does. Anyone could have written the article but nobody else did.
(2) In the deletion of this picture only two people were involved which is something I am very surprised of. It opposes any form of democratic procedure that is imaginable. One tags it, the other deletes it. Good team work!
I had the allowance of a world renowned photographer to use this picture in an article. The whole process took time and efforts to get the right to publish it in Wikipedia.
Obviously there are admins and users who nearly enjoy to delete work and time that others have invested. Proudly they call it their 20,000th edit. Disgusting.
I think this whole approach is misguided and harms Wikipedia. I see it as pure ideology of hardliners and purists.
Free text and free images shouldn't be confused. Wikipedia will never reach the quality of its articles with free images. Most of the free photos I saw in everyday Wikipedia articles are mediocre to say the best. The admins who have the majority at the time only think from their dogmatics and not from the needs for our users.
I am 51 year old and have a daily job to pay my bills. All time for Wikipedia is worthy extra time and I am not interested to spend my time with people who act in the way I've seen lately and tried to describe above.
Therefore in the future I will only update my existing articles and only start one or two new ones which I already have prepared.-- Peter Eisenburger 17:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
As an immediate result of my statement two other pages were tagged [2] [3] All articles had been reviewed by other admins (including "deletionsts") before. -- Peter Eisenburger 05:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I know that the editors who frequent this page are particular busy now. A few creative minds, however, would be sincerely appreciated.
What we have is Category:Free screenshots ... a category that is used, misused and abused. It is meant only for screenshots of free software (as in software that is licensed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, or other similar licenses). It regularly fills up, however, with screenshots of television shows, of regular run-of-the-mill photographs, etc. This would not be a problem, but it is rather tiring to go through the category over and over again.
Of course, if we could get more editors active in maintaining the categories, this would not be a problem. I don't, however, expect or demand anyone to do such a thing (though I would appreciate it!).
My question, then, is: What can be done about this situation? How can the process to keep inappropriate images out of the category or off of Wikipedia (if necessary) be streamlined? Can the criteria for inclusion in the category be made more obvious? How can our image licensing procedures be made more accessible?
I bring this here because something needs to be done. The current situation of increasing demands on we image and copyright folks and increasing image uploads seems, to me, to be untenable. This is a rather small and isolated category, yet it is currently in need of constant maintenance. How can we change that? -- Iamunknown 06:08, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone else think this is a silly way to tag images? From what I can gather, looking at the history of Template:Non-free use rationale, an "article" parameter has been added. It would make more sense to update all such images, rather than tag them for deletion. I've fixed this one, but some process seems to have broken down here. Can we please get systems in place before tagging starts? Carcharoth 14:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The ideal solution would be to get a bot to cross-reference CSD and Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink so that the recent images in Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink can be tidied up as well, rather than speedy deleted. Or find some way for the bots to recognise that only a minor fix is needed, and apply some suitable tag. Carcharoth 16:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
BCBot does not look for the inclusion/exclusion of that parameter. BCBot does look for the article name. weather or not its in that parameter doesnt matter. As for tagging images. BCBot does ignore images uploaded prior to January 1, 2007. see
this for images uploaded prior to jan 1, that have rationale problems.
βcommand
23:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
This is also being discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass image mistaggings by BetacommandBot. Carcharoth 04:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Getting the non-free image description correct is becoming more and more like the children's game
Simon says. It does not matter if all of the information is there, it must be in an exact format. And the format changes at random times. --
SWTPC6800
05:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I've opened a discussion on the next generation of our license (important since if we are going to get free media we have to have a license people like) at Wikipedia:GSFDL comments from as many as possible are requested. Geni 03:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
This is an extremely common use for copyrighted images, but we have no tag to track it. Part of the problem with this going on unregulated is that there are no standards for what constitutes a sufficient search for a PD image. I see this a lot where people are adding nonfree images and there are perfectly good free images in the LOC. This also could have mandatory birth/death parameters, so if someone says the subject was born in 1885 or so we could insist that a free image is probably out there somewhere. Any thoughts? Calliopejen1 17:49, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I moved this from a different section because it was straying from the topic. Calliopejen1 02:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Incidentially, I was looking at Template:Historic fur, and was wondering why you thought it was "a controversial stock rationale"? Because it might be more prone to deliberate overuse because deciding whether something is historic is more subjective than deciding whether something is an album cover? Does this mean that those who can judge such things properly have to cut and paste the rationales instead of using a template? Are there not ways to have the template, but monitor it for incorrect use? Carcharoth 04:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Simply as a procedural matter, our initial proposal for tempalted rationales only includes the four very basic cases (logos, album covers, book covers, and 2D / 3D artwork. We chose those because they're collectively very significant and also they're mostly uncontroversial. The idea is that once we have those four in palce, there will be a process for proposing and adding new ones to the list of approved templates, but only templates on that list will be deemed valid. If you jump the gun and start using a new template outside of the approval process it will start out as invalid on day one...and I really don't think we want to expand the list just yet because it's more important to get this thing in place than to get sidetracked over other templates that are more complicated or controversial. If we get too far afield the whole project could fall apart. So one thing at a time. Wikidemo 11:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
So, what is the copyright status of email text? I ask in the particular case of image:24-19-1.jpg, since it is basically a screenshot of an auto-reply email. Any ideas? Drewcifer 01:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Would images from http://www.nps.gov be considered free? I'm assuming so as it's a Federal agency. They give credit by name to the photographers in many instances of specific locations, but that is all. Would these be alright to use? This is a good specific example:
http://www.nps.gov/nr//travel/atlanta/cab.htm
On that page, the top right image is "Courtesy of..." a certain group, while the bottom one, as on this page, appears to be just listing the photographer's name. Any guidance would be helpful. • Lawrence Cohen 22:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
"Information presented on this website, unless otherwise indicated , is considered in the public domain. It may may be distributed or copied as is permitted by the law. Not all information on this website has been created or is owned by the NPS. If you wish to use any non-NPS material, you must seek permission directly from the owning (or holding) sources. NPS shall have the unlimited right to use for any purpose, free of any charge, all information submitted to NPS via this site except those submissions made under separate legal contract. NPS shall be free to use, for any purpose, any ideas, concepts, or techniques contained in information provided to NPS through this site."
http://www.nps.gov/disclaimer.htm ( SEWilco 00:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC))
The images in the article Israel Defense Forces ranks are mostly tagged with {{ GFDL}}, but are sourced to http://dover.idf.il/IDF/About/Insignia/דרגות+קצינים+נגדים+וחוגרים.htm. I cannot read Hebrew, but it appears that the images are under some fashion of copyright per the text at the bottom of the page: "צבא ההגנה לישראל © 2007 כל הזכויות שמורות RSS | תנאי שימוש" Can anybody here help out with this? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 00:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at de:Vorlage:Bild-PD-alt-100. An online translator turns it into this:
"The period of protection for the original collecting main of this file ran off most likely after the yardsticks of German copyright, which file therefore treated as in common-free. Note: This acceptance does not correspond accurately to the legal regulation. The probability for a pursuit by a holder of a right is however so small that the German-language Wikipedia bears the file. Thus the existence of a copyright protection is not impossible. For this publication the Uploader is responsible. This component should be used with files, whose original collecting mains are old between 100 and 150 years and whose author and/or its death date does not admit is (for older pictures please Vorlage:Bild PD old use)."
I think this means:
"It's probably public domain under German copyright law, but we don't have the information to be legally precise about it. It is very unlikely that a copyright holder exists, or will assert rights, therefore we host it on German Wikipedia, and not Commons, but the uploader is still responsible. Use this for files between 100 and 150 years old where you don't know the author or author death date. For older images, use PD-old."
Does this sound like something Wikipedia could use? Carcharoth 22:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I know people have talked about this before as an alternative to copyrighted photos, and I just noticed the awesome stippled portrait at Jorge Luis Borges. I contacted the uploader and he said he drew it and would be willing to draw a few more more if he had some spare time. He asked if there was a list somewhere of articles needing such illustrations.... Any ideas of important biographies that are missing free images? Calliopejen1 14:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm trying to find a picture of Christian August Friedrich Peters (1806-1880) to illustrate both his article and one of the sections at Astronomische Nachrichten. The best one I've found so far is here. Can anyone who know German help out with identifying the source of the picture? What is the copyright/public domain status here? Can we use that picture or not? (The picture is near the bottom of the page). Carcharoth 11:49, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Maybe I should just use {{ PD-US-1923-abroad}}? That might be simplest. I can't prove when it was published, but as was said above "about 80% of PD-US pictures on en.wiki are photos that were taken before 1923 but we have no proof of publication, so if we're not accepting this sort of images, we have a lot of deleting to do...". Carcharoth 02:41, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The effects of the effort to tighten non-free use can be easily seen in the image upload/deletion stats from this analysis. Dragons flight 01:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm more interested in why there are peaks of uploading. you would expect peaks in deletion, as that is a stop-start process internal to Wikipedia. I was under the impression that uploads were fairly steady, but it seems there are peaks in that as well. Are there groups of people or single people, that upload in large quantities? Carcharoth 02:03, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
And a jump from under 500 uploads/day to over 2500 uploads/day in two years - is that consistent with the overall growth of Wikipedia? Carcharoth 02:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Is that 2,500 non-free uploads a day or 2,500 total uploads a day? Some more data points I've been collecting for a few days regarding use of the non-free use rationale template: Template talk:Non-free use rationale#The count. Wikidemo 06:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I am announcing a proposal to change certain aspects of WP:NFCC#10, the part of policy about image description pages. This proposal would simplify the data required on image description pages of nonfree images. It would also allow for certain common use rationales (like a book cover image on the article about the book) to be obtained from templates.
The proposal does not change any other part of the nonfree content criteria. But, as conversation on this talk page indicates, making the image description pages easier to format correctly would make it easier to bring images into compliance and make it easier to detect new images that don't provide required information.
The proposal is at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal and its talk page is Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria/Proposal. This proposal was developed by conversation among User:Anetode, User:Betacommand, User:Wikidemo and me. We hope others will look over it and discuss it on the associated talk page. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I've archived part of the discussion on the proposal talk page to indicate that we had nearly unanimous consensus to adopt the proposal. Now that we've decided to do it, the real work comes. We need to design and propose the various templates, and get ready with implementation details. We're planning to take this live on Jan 1, 2008, but we ought to have everything in place long before then so there are no glitches. Let's keep the momentum going here. Wikidemo 15:35, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I've recently ran across another user who started tagging about 100 logos per night for lack of use rationale or source, without distinguishing between "legacy" images or appropriate non-free uses. This affects articles on some of the more important organizations in America - for example, Image:Marshall Field's logo.svg, Image:QwestLogo.png, Image:US Bancorp logo.png, Image:Norwest logo.png, Image:American Civil Liberties Union logo.png, Image:Salon.com logo.png, Image:Slate logo.png, Image:ZDNet logo.png, Image:Thomson logo.png, etc. In reviewing and spot checking I see many of the tags were in error, for example this one. I would guess from my examination an error rate of 10-20%, depending on your threshold for accepting a use rationale as legitimate.
I've tried to discuss this on the editor's talk page but she has not agreed to concentrate on the new images, try to save rather than deleting images, etc. I'm hoping we can just get everyone to agree to take things slow while we work on our new proposal. What I'm afraid of is that if mass tagging and deletion of old images continues it forces the issue at a time when we are making some real progress. So far Betacommand has himself agreed to concentrate on the newer images first, and we seem to have an understanding that others aren't going after the old images in bulk just yet. If that understanding holds I think we can get something in place - we seem to have agreement. If not, we may need to make it mandatory by adding something to NFCC or CSD. Wikidemo 09:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Before this dicussion becomes fully forgotten, I'd just like to express my thoughts. Firstly (to Chris.B). Please outline any part of my dialogue with Wikidemo that consitutes a personal attack. I happen to have respect for Wikidemo for being the kind of editor he is. Personal attacks are unnecessary and I strive to make sure that I maintain civility when editing any part of wikipedia. Secondly (to Wikidemo) the way in which you approached me, I felt, was accusatory, with the attitude that what I was doing was not allowed (i.e tagging images). I felt like you were trying to bully me into doing things your way ("consequences"). I know that probably wasn't your intention at all - I'm just letting you know how it felt being on the other side. What you were asking of me was something that I had the choice to refuse or accept, and either outcome was fine under policy. I couldn't seem to make it clear that I was allowed to not do what you asked. Even above ("she won't even participate in the discussion because she doesn't like "politics." "), you seem like you're belittling me for not wanting to get involved with part of the project I dislike. But it doesn't matter now.
As cohesion points out above "You will always have people acting under the strict rule of policy", although I was not acting under the strict rule, I was just exercising my right to do what policy says.
It just felt like I was being portrayed unfairly; I just wanted to make things clear.
Seraphim Whipp 12:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I see that OsamaKBOT adds no source tags. What is the normal way to make sources machine-readable so the same bot won't come back and tag it again? Is this an acceptable way to add a source so that a bot can recognise it? If not, then OsamaKBOT needs to instruct people on how to do this. I've notified the bot operator. Carcharoth 18:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
We are in a loop. Here it is: Creating a list of images that might or might not have a proper source listed = GOOD. Editing thousands of image pages (e.g., templating) in a way that may lead to images whose uploaders have followed all the rules, and which are thus legitimately resident on Wikipedia, being deleted (and doing all this without the approval of the Community) = REALLY FUCKING BAD. Your bot does both of these things, but the good does not cancel out the bad. This is why your bot would not have been allowed to exceed its 50-edit trial run, had you not decided to keep it running anyway, approval or no approval. --Dynaflow babble 15:10, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
OsamaK has a point there. User:STBotI does seem to be tagging images for lack of sources. I've dropped a note off on the bot operator's talk page and asked them to clarify here what is going on. It is entirely possible that he is using AWB and human oversight, as opposed to unsupervised automated bot editing. Carcharoth 10:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I had a problem with the bot myself; images tagged with a source and a license still got tagged for no source and or copyright. I talked it over with the botowner on IRC and on my talk page, but I am still just slightly annoyed by it. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 00:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Introduction:
Policy excerpts
The image or media description page contains the following:
It is important that you list the author of the image (especially if different from the source), which is important both for copyright and for informational purposes. Some copyright licenses require that the original author receive credit for their work. Examples:
Proposed change (in red)
10 Image description page. The image or media description page contains the following:
10 Image description page. The image or media description page contains the following:
Benefits
Jackaranga 09:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment - Thanks to Jackaranga for his interest in the problem of noncompliant images, but another proposal on the subject has recently gained nearly universal consensus (see heading earlier on this page, and Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal ). Jackaranga's proposal conflicts with the earlier one, so I do not think we should approve it. The earlier proposal follows what I believe is a strong consensus that all images need source information and use rationales, but calls for templates that greatly simplify the process of uploading and using images, tagging noncompliant images by bot, and fixing tagged images. Although film posters are not in our initial batch of templates to develop (those are logos, book covers, album covers, and 2D and 3D artwork), it would be a logical next step to propose something for film posters once we get the initial ones in place. The target date is January 1, 2008. In the meanwhile I don't think the deletion issue is as bad as Jackaranga suspects. Those doing the large-scale tagging and deletion efforts have agreed informally to direct their efforts to new images uploaded after January 1, 2007 for the time being, so the "legacy" images uploaded before then are getting a reprieve until we can figure out what to do. The current round of large-scale deletions began sometime in June or July, and since then they have vigilantly challenged new images uploaded without sources and use rationales. So we only have a five month window, from January to May of this year, where there are a lot of noncompliant images in immediate danger of deletion. That's a lot of images, but nowhere near 90%. I don't think we should move to a "common sense" test on whether sources are needed or not. Of course common sense should be applied to all rules, but we need more guidance than that. The simplest approach, which i think has wide consensus, is to require people to say what they know about where they got an image and who owns the copyright, at the time they do the uploading. There's strong consensus for continuing to require use rationales every time an image is used, and film posters are no exception. But we will be making the process easier. Wikidemo 10:02, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I read somewhere on Wikipedia that fair use images can be used on the main page for Today's Featured Article. However, after several searches around Wikipedia's fair use guidelines, I can't seem to find that bit of stipulation. Now, people on the request block for Today's Featured Article are opposing and bitching about articles that are being requested because "They don't have a free use image to use." Now, I know I saw this stipulation somewhere. Whether it's outdated or has been removed, I don't know. Could someone help me on this? Helltopay27 22:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I would appreciate the opinions of other users on whether this screenshot Image:JPvelociraptor.png from the Jurassic Park film is fair use in anything other than the Jurassic Park articles. I am pretty sure it isn't, as otherwise we could use any depiction of anything in the article of that thing which I am pretty sure would send Wikipedia the wrong side of fair use law. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 11:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I believe what Jackaranga was after was what I've put at Image:JPvelociraptor.png#Source. This was already obvious from the summary, which said the source was the film "Jurassic Park". I would point out to Jackaranga that copyright ownership can change over the years, so the requirement should be to give the copyright details at the time of uploading, not the present details. Carcharoth 16:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I always have new editors, some old, coming to me asking "what do you mean by critical commentary?", when I tell them that their non-free image does not meet WP:FU. Upon reviewing the guideline, which has changed a bit over time, I realized that "critical commentary" is used six times, and not one time do we actually explain what we mean by "critical commentary". I really think this guideline would benefit if there was an good explaination as to what "critical commentary" refers to for certain non-free images. Otherwise, it just because the same tireless debate over "well, I mentioned it, so that's critical commentary, right?" Even I have to admit that sometimes I'm unsure about the appropriate commentary for an image. Sometimes the image may be encyclopedic, but the right words might not come to any one editor's mind to establish why that image is necessary. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 03:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I have for some time been gradually trying to ensure that fair-use album cover images are not used in band articles. I last brought it here in August; here is the relevant archive. There was another relevant discussion here more recently.
My stance is (briefly) that using album covers in band articles is not good fair use (it contradicts the boilerplate text in the fair use license) and in many cases may also discourage people from uploading free images, where that is possible.
While wary of the danger of instruction creep, it might be worth having a specific clause in the policy that makes it clear that this sort of thing is not valid fair use. Wiggle-room could be left for truly exceptional cases, but I am concerned that each of these (what seem to me like) consensuses exists in isolation and there is not really a central point we can refer to on this, thus leading to the argument having to be refought for every single band article. Alternatively, it may be that I am wrong and that there is a project-wide consensus that this is, or may sometimes be, a valid fair use, although it is hard for me to see that. The same issues apply to book covers used in authors' articles, and maybe elsewhere too.
Here is the most recent manifestation of this lack of clarity. Your comments would be welcome, there or (preferably) here. -- John 20:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Album covers are a significant part of the brand image created by most professional bands and, obviously, a central element of their marketing. They thus provide valuable information—irreplacable by text alone or by free images—for articles on virtually all professional popular music acts. As for how many such images should be called upon to serve this significant purpose, that clearly varies from band to band, from article to article. To have a sweeping policy clause that their appearance in band articles is not valid fair use is (a) not supported legally and (b) does not best serve Wikipedia's mission. We can promote the use of free images and the judicious use of fair-use images without restricting the latter in a way that unnecesarily undermines the quality of the encyclopedia.— DCGeist 21:03, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
"The use of non-free media in lists, galleries, discographies, and navigational and user-interface elements usually fails the test for significance (criterion #8), and if it fails this test such use is unacceptable.
Here are other images that if non-free would almost certainly not satisfy the policy.
1. An album cover as part of a discography, as per the above. Album covers in band articles, and book covers in author pages, are not automatically good fair use. Additional fair use of this kind would have to be justified by a special rationale on the image page showing the unique contribution the image makes to every article in which its use is proposed." ...
"The use of non-free media in lists, galleries, discographies, and navigational and user-interface elements usually fails the test for significance (criterion #8), and if it fails this test such use is unacceptable.
Here are other images that if non-free would almost certainly not satisfy the policy.
1. An album cover as part of a discography, as per the above. Album covers in band articles, and book covers in author pages, are not automatically good fair use. A separate and specific rationale must be provided on the image page for every particular use of a given fair-use image showing the unique contribution the image makes to every article in which its use is proposed." ...
I've drafted something which seems to balance our wish to use these images occasionally under special circumstances with the principle of minimizing the use of nonfree images which the project has adopted. It is not perfect I am sure, but I think it would be better than the current situation. -- John 07:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Somebody please help me decode this discussion on album cover images. After all of the back and forth, above, I am not certain exactly where the discussion ended up: are we or are we not allowed to use an album cover image on an album's page? If we are allowed, then what fair use criterion should we cite? BTW, I did "get" that we need to provide a copyright citation (and credit if known). Thanks. Christopher Rath 00:26, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry, but there is a slow motion edit war at [5] over whether quotes used in user space violate the guidelines for non-free content.
As silly as it seems, the anon does appear to be correct that the terms of WP:NFCC, as presently written, do seem to exclude the use of non-free text (i.e. quotes) outside of article space. Dragons flight 21:13, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
It says under the 'Unacceptable images' section that 'An album cover as part of a discography' is not allowed. However, it is my understanding in accordance with WP:FUC, if a band's article does not have separate articles for each respective album, then it is not a fair-use violation to have those album covers under the band's discography. This 'content guideline' contradicts the official policy of WP:FUC. Is anyone opposed to rewording the sentence to read 'An album cover as part of a discography, which has separate articles for the respective albums' or something similar? Please offer input. Thank you. — Christopher Mann McKay talk 20:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 25 | ← | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | Archive 29 | Archive 30 | Archive 31 | → | Archive 35 |
WP:PUI is hugely backlogged, all the way back to July. A lot of the photos are in limbo due to uncertainty about their copyright status because no one knows the relevant law. (For example, can a photo of the Cinderella castle in Disneyland be released under a free license, or is it a derivative work? There are also a fair amount of unanswered questions about international copyrights.) If any editors want to go through the old pages (linked under the "log pages" section) and put in their two cents, that would be great... and it would be even better if other admins could help with the deleting. Thanks! Calliopejen1 20:54, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
The notion that these images should be automatically deleted is far too presumptive, IMO, to allow sustainable maintenance of reasonable good-faith interrelationships among users across the wiki. One of the things that is conspicuously lacking here is proper notice. Take a look, for example, at Image:Bristol_Buckingham.jpg, uploaded three years ago with a statement of source and a reasonable justification for why it's in the public domain. Now look at the article in which it's been used for quite some time, Bristol_Buckingham. Now look at Talk:Bristol_Buckingham. Where's the notice that the hawks are circling around this prey? There is a notice on the uploader's talk page, but that uploader hasn't been involved in the article on Bristol_Buckingham for over three years, and has moved on to other things, presumably thinking that the article on Bristol Buckingham is taken care of and it's time to move onto other things. Fortunately, the uploader is still regularly active three years after the upload. But what about the widespread cases where the uploader is either no longer involved or doesn't check in regularly? And, I should add, that there have been a number of contributors to this article on Bristol Buckinham as seen in the revision history, but no apparent need for use of the talk page to get the article to its present state. This is just a sample of the reasons that the attitude or assumption "they had all the chances in the world to fix it" does not accurately represent the situations that occur across the wiki, and is not, under the present methods, sustainable policy-- not, at least, without making further messes of mutual good will built in the last several years across the wiki. Just figured I should mention some of these things.. ... Kenosis 04:48, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Carcaroth, fairly kindly, says "ReyBrujo and Kenosis are both right here". Of course, each may well be "right" (whatever "right" is) from different perspectives. I'm mainly concerned about the difference in perspectives w.r.t. the efforts to efficiently and expediently delete images deemed offensive by some, whether because they're "non-free", or tagged as questionable in some way, or alleged to be inadequately verified as to their status (when in fact many such images are adequately verified), and a host of other complaints. These are not, IMO, proper justifications for mass deletions, nor are they proper justifications for massive manual cleanup efforts.
........ Among many other things, this is not, as ReyBrujo said, an "ultimate truth" we're dealing with here. And I sincerely hope it's not anyone's ultimate truth -- I merely take it as ReyBrujo's expression of frustration arising out of a perception of excessive accumulation and delay in achieving this aspect of previously formed set of goals. Far from being an ultimate truth or ultimate solution, this all is a work in progress where there is a very significant lag time in many different maintenance tasks, between the time when the insertion or initial formation of particular material into the wiki (in this case images and other media files), and then the time at which someone identifying the tasks perceived by the user placing the maintenance tag to be needed, and then later, perhaps much later, to the actual fulfillment of the maintenance tasks. This lengthy lag time is not limited to media files. Drive-by "unreferenced" templates and "needs more verification" tags have become increasingly common on the wiki too. People get to thinking that the whole wiki isn't adequately sourced, and go 'round placing tags. Thus the question of "who will do the actual work?" comes into play in many areas, not just w.r.t. images and not just w.r.t. deletion of material that someone has questioned by placing a maintenance tag on it. These lengthy lag times are, IMO, an inevitable part of dealing with the material in an open-source wiki such as WP.
........ But, a mass effort or automated effort to "take out the trash" that presumes the goal is "deletion", or that presumes the goal is "only free content", or other narrowly focused effort, has shown itself recently to be capable of doing more harm than good. We've seen visible evidence of this already, people leaving the wiki in disgust specifically because of the fights over these things, with many reasonable, clearly competent users making many statements to the effect that they feel either unfairly treated or caught in the middle of something irrational. We can only guess and extrapolate how much we've been unable to observe. Of course images can be replaced -- so can virtually any content presently on the wiki, in theory at least. But the procedure by which the stuff is removed is extremely important in maintaining good will among users on the wiki. If this aspect of cleanup efforts is not respectful of user contributions to existing articles, with a process that users at the local level can tend to agree essentially "well, collectively we admit we were treated fairly on that issue", the cost could forseeably greatly outweigh the benefits here -- assuming it hasn't already begun to do that.
........ As I've pointed out before, roughly nine out of ten IfDs go uncontested or only mildly contested. That appears to be fairly closely in keeping with Jimbo Wales' statement that 90% of the NFC on the wiki is unnecessary. IMO, no need to get ballistic about the remainder, at least not under the present circumstances. Presently, as I said, we need to get notice to the appropriate users that the images in articles they've worked on are in potential jeopardy, be it in 7 days, or 7 years. Adequate notice, with a reasonable time to respond after adequate notice is provided, plainly is one of the key affirmative steps that can be taken in this quarter of the wiki, a step that lends itself both towards removing images that arguably are copyright violations (up to and including free-licensed images whose origin is not reasonably well verifiable), and also lends itself towards a better sense of having been treated fairly in the process. After that's addressed and implemented, dealing with backlogs potentially becomes a more soluble discussion, IMO, where certain additional kinds of automated deletion can more reasonably come into play. . ...
Kenosis
16:00, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I have been doing copyright searches on magazine covers and have found the many are in the public domain. Most of the pre 1964 Ziff-Davis Publishing and Gernsback Publications were not renewed and are in the public domain. If a few cases a magazine was sold; and the new copyright holder renewed some issues. Amazing Stories issues around 1955 are an example.
The March 1961 through January 1964 issues of Electronics Illustrated by Fawcett Publications were not renewed and are in the public domain. After a series of buyouts and mergers, someone forgot about renewing the out of print titles. For more details see here: Talk:Electronics_Illustrated#Copyright_renewal
I am interested in hobbyist electronics magazines such as Radio Electronics and Popular Electronics. Because the pre 1964 issues are public domain; I have been able to change about half of my Fair Use magazine covers to public domain.
When I changed the license to PD-US-not renewed I left all of the information for Fair Use in the image description. This is in case a future revision of NFCC requires a certified letter from the Register of Copyright, Marybeth Peters, attesting to the lack of a copyright renewal. These images would be easy to change back to Fair Use while waiting for the letter.
I am interested in comments about these two magazine covers. Is this sufficient proof of PD-US-not renewed? I have a few more of my images to convert plus magazine covers others have uploaded.
I have been spending way to much time following the latest Fair Use requirements and fine-tuning the image description pages. I would like to spend more time adding content and improving my articles. (My prose could use that.) I hope that my asking for comment here on NFC doesn't result in a speedy delete of all of my images because of a minor technical detail.
SWTPC6800 02:33, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
The magazine publishing world has always had a lot of buying and selling of titles. In the case of Electronics Illustrated, I doubt that anyone at Hachette Filipacchi Media knows anything about the magazine. Electronics Illustrated was absorbed into Mechanix Illustrated in November 1972. Mechanix Illustrated became Home Mechanix in 1985. After the Diamandis Communications leveraged buyout, Home Mechanix was sold to Times Mirror Magazines. Diamandis continued to renew the copyrights on Electronics Illustrated until they were acquired by Hachette. In all of the merger confusion the copyright renewal stopped. These companies are not going to do a forensic search to determine what happened. We have positive proof that the copyright renewals stopped and the issues are in public domain.
SWTPC6800
14:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Electronics Illustrated did not identify the cover photographers on the early issues. They started giving credits around 1963. None of the issues that I have give a separate copyright notice for the cover photo. The Radio News cover appears to be by a staff illustrator. David Hymes did every cover for two years in the early 1930s. I do not upload covers with celebrities, the first Radio News published by Ziff-Davis (April 1938) has Lucille Ball on the cover. I would believe that one could have a photographer or studio copyright. If no notice or credit is given, we should be able to assume the cover is a work for hire. You had to actively claim a copyright before 1978. -- SWTPC6800 17:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Some more results from my brief survey of Category:Images with unknown source. Image:Stonebw01.jpg and Image:Draug.jpg have been tracked down. When it is taking too long, or the image is poor quality or not needed (others already in articles) I move on. Sometimes, though, there are annoying cases of pictures obviously scanned from a book, obviously old and PD, but not enough information to save them. One example (this one's not obviously PD) is Image:Mortimer Lewis Main Block of Asylum built 1837-8.jpg (an asylum in Gladesville, NSW, Australia). The uploader didn't give any information, and vanished after uploading. I looked up Mortimer Lewis and found a nice biography here. I was tempted to start an article at Mortimer William Lewis, but then realised that I had no way of finding out the source of that picture. :-( Carcharoth 20:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Can envelopes and other items of stationery have copyrights applied? The image in question is Image:3letter.jpg. Would copyright apply to that? It's probably old enough to be PD-US anyway, but I thought I'd check. Carcharoth 01:41, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I have begun a conversation with User:Rich Farmbrough, Misza13 and Betacommand about automating the basic type of tally that Betacommand recently compiled here. The objective is to keep a periodic automated tally of licencing template usage, particularly but not necessarily limited to NFC tags and public domain tags, in such a way that interested participants can keep tabs on template usage. Ideally, I think, something that will allow trend lines to be displayed for usage of each template will assist the project in discerning usage trends and the distribution of standard rationales across different classifications of images and other media files.
Just wanted to keep everybody here apprised that I received a response from both Rich Farmbrough and Misza13 and left a note about it on Betacommand's talk page. The beginning threads about this are at User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers (with a brief response on my talk page User talk:Kenosis#Bot requirements), ( User_talk:Misza13#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers, and User_talk:Betacommand#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers. ... Kenosis 15:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
For start, I have begun moving my tools to my toolserver repository. So far I have put the category tracker, spoiler tracker and image deletion bots. Миша 13 17:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
In a similar vein, I found Image:Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo.jpg and with this edit I tidied up the image page and removed a "no sources" tag. There is an interesting history there, though. Put yourself in the shoes of User:Jacopock. Look over his contributions here, and his uploads here, and settle down and read the following story.
Jacopock created his account at 18:11, 23 September 2007, and two minutes later dumped an essay on Wikipedia with this edit (18:13), and then made this experiment at adding an image (18:18). This was followed by three attempts to upload the same picture (all three were uploaded), possibly just attempting to get the upload name correct (18:22 for Image:Arcenio.jpg, 18:25 for Image:Arsenio de carpo.jpg, and 18:29 for Image:Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo.jpg). The trail then goes cold. No more contributions. Possibly the user failed to work out how to get images to display and gave up in disgust.
The next part of the story concerns User:OrphanBot, who, noticing that Jacopock had failed to give the images a license tag, comes along and tags them as needing more information (otherwise they will "be deleted within 7 days"). OrphanBot also leaves a message at User talk:Jacopock (at 19:06). In fact, OrphanBot's message is one of the better written and more polite bot messages, but still, I'm never quite sure how people react to being (effectively) greeted by a bot.
At this point (well, around 3 hours later), I enter the story. I was browsing Category:Images with unknown source as of 23 September 2007 and the faded brown paper of a scan of an old image caught my eye. I investigated and discovered an interesting article at Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo (well, when I first saw it, it was hardly an article). After checking to see if it was a copyvio (doesn't seem to be) or if it was a hoax (again, seems to be genuine), I set about tidying up the image and article, with my first step being to add the image to the article (21:54). I then tidied up the image and removed the bot-added tag (pending more information), some 6 minutes later. I then welcomed Jacopock with a template, and followed up with a specific message asking for image and article sources.
Over the next hour or so, I tidied up the article, changing it from this to this. Mostly pretty standard wiki-linking and copyediting, with a fair bit of work still to do, though hopefully others will help. This did get me wondering though about how WP:BITEy it is for new users, struggling to upload images and get them to work, to get a bot notice on their talk page. The message might be polite and helpful, but it is hardly friendly. I realise that Jackopock might only have been interested in depositing an essay on Wikipedia, but maybe a more friendly approach could encourage more people to continue to contribute? One thing that might help is to get the image bots to put {{ welcome}} on the pages of new users before adding notices about images. How easy would it be to do that?
Finally, the image would likely have been deleted after a week, when in fact it was a perfectly OK image. It was just an all too common case of a user not really understanding what to do. New users sometimes don't edit for periods of several days. Maybe a week is too short a time for new users to learn about how Wikipedia works. Surely there must be a better way to handle things than this? Carcharoth 23:52, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
These two sentences seem to say very similar things. Can they be conflated somehow?
"Where possible, non-free content is transformed into free material instead of using a fair-use defense. Non-free content is always replaced with a freer alternative if one of acceptable quality is available."
Is this "free" vs. "freer"? Why "transformed" and then "replaced"? This language should be a straighforward as possible. Tony (talk) 03:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
As I was looking through Category:Images with unknown source (and I assume that this applies to Category:Images with unknown copyright status), I noticed a lot of logos up for deletion as not having a source. One example: Image:Byuhlogo.jpg ... so, it is a logo for BYU Hawaii ... I'm pretty sure the source is just going to be BYU Hawaii's website.
Lately we (including myself) have been getting stricter on lack of sources, and we now have bots that can fairly accurately detect when there is no source and tag the image as such. Problem is, logos, album covers and books don't a priori need a source written down. I've seen many editors say, "I didn't write down the source because it is obvious!11!!11 The source is the book/album/company website/company letterhead/etc." And I agree; in most cases w.r.t. logos, album covers, and book covers, it is obvious.
I guess we should decide on what the spirit of the source-requirement is ... is it that every image must have a source and, even if it could easily be saved by someone who instead automatically tags it, it should be deleted? Or is it that we need to actively prevent plagiarism, copyright violations, and also mistakes by (mostly) newbie editors, and, since it is obvious (or would be a trivial search) who holds the copyright to a logo, book cover, and album cover, a source should not be a reason to delete an image.
If the latter, I would like to change the {{ no source}} and {{ no copyright}} (or whatever the templates are now) accordingly...but that won't solve the problem of the bots who tag images with no source automatically. What do you all think? -- Iamunknown 14:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the same logic can be applied animal actors as can be applied to human actors when it comes to non-free images, if not more so. We have not just one, but four non-free images on Porthos (Star Trek). Normally I'd think this is a no brainer and just remove the images, but I suspect it might be "controversial", so I'll ask here first. -- Ned Scott 06:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
And there you go. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 and had illustrations. The primary illustration for Toto (dog) should be an illustration from the first edition of the book. Then an adaptations section can deal with the portrayal of the dog in different adaptations of the book, with or without images as the case may be. But honestly, if people promoting free content think that a free image of a dog born in 1933 can be used to illustrate an article about a character from a book published in 1900, then they are really missing the point. Getting the correct encyclopedic image must come before free/non-free concerns. Otherwise you just start to mislead readers. Carcharoth 20:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Picking up on something Carl said above: "The image in the article is illustrating the dog from the movie, which is a very well known movie after all. So it's not a poor choice of image. " - surely you are joking? The correct use for such an image would be in the film. ie. in The Wizard of Oz (1939 film). It is misleading to put, up front, a picture of an actor from a film, to illustrate an article on a character from a book. Period. There are no two ways about it. Carcharoth 20:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I am announcing a proposal to change certain aspects of WP:NFCC#10, the part of policy about image description pages. This proposal would simplify the data required on image description pages of nonfree images. It would also allow for certain common use rationales (like a book cover image on the article about the book) to be obtained from templates.
The proposal does not change any other part of the nonfree content criteria. But, as conversation on this talk page indicates, making the image description pages easier to format correctly would make it easier to bring images into compliance and make it easier to detect new images that don't provide required information.
The proposal is at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal and its talk page is Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria/Proposal. This proposal was developed by conversation among User:Anetode, User:Betacommand, User:Wikidemo and me. We hope others will look over it and discuss it on the associated talk page. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I want to start a new discussion regarding DVD cover art. IMHO I think adding these to relevant articles with proper references and identification should be perfectly acceptable. It would be no different then Amazon.com or other websites using cover images. It helps articles particularly those with DVD sections and tables. I've seen them particularly helpful in seeing different the different DVD region covers. What would it take to modify WP:FU to include this?? Thanks FrankWilliams 17:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Kenosis used the phrase "different releases of the same work" - I think the terms commonly used are "editions", "releases", "adaptations" and "remakes" (plus some others, probably). The Planet of the Apes examples are remakes inspired by the original film. You also have spin-offs and sequels. Adaptations would be something like the examples in Category:Middle-earth adaptations, where you have films, radio dramas, and theatrical adaptations of the original story (a book), and also various games and parodies based on or inspired by the original story. This is why something like Frodo#Adaptations is arguably a good fair-use use of a gallery. The gallery accompanies text about the different portrayal of Frodo in different adaptations, rather than being different releases of the same work (5 pics of Frodo from the same film). Another example is Cleopatra (film). Well, it was, but I see that the image I was intending to use as an example, Image:Films named cleopatra.JPG, has been speedily deleted. I think I wrote the fair-use rationale for that - can someone look at the deleted revisions and check that? The image showed posters/covers for three different Cleopatra films, and did a good job, IMO, of illustrating the topic. Also, consider Image:1665 phil trans vol i title.png and Image:RSTB 362 1479 thumbnail.jpg. Same product? In some senses, yes, in other senses, no. Then look at Image:HMCoSecondEdHobbits.jpg. Same product being illustrated 11 times, but a definite reason for the image, unrelated to the normal reason for using an image of a book cover. Carcharoth 21:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Gentlemen what I've been arguing is what Wikidemo just said above. "Cover art of CDs, DVDs, books, etc., is generally allowable on Wikipedia (and covered by fair use) for purposes of identifying the work in question. I was identifying the DVD's via their covers in the appropriate articles which were clearly mentioned. Editors such as Arcayne have argued that this is not enough and that "Critical Commentary" are needed to justify the covers. Is "Critical Commentary" a necessary criteria?? If so why; and it can it be changed? I again use Amazon.com as an example. The fact they selling the items doesn't matter; they are "identifying" the product just as I was doing in the wiki articles. What's the difference? Just as Wikidemo says above "Publishers, distributors, and creators use covers as the primary means to visually identify and brand their works because humans are visual creatures; we use to identify article subjects for a similar purpose." AGREED. FrankWilliams 15:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I stand correct, thanks Wikidemo. Gentlepeople, agreed, what I would like to do is have a sample DVD cover for each of the five seasons in the Miami Vice article. The pics are small and obtrusive and would be at the end of the article. Anyone have any problems with this? I gues under what Wikidemo says I'd be looking for an exception. FrankWilliams 18:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, where do we go from here. Wikidemo you seem to have the most knowledge in this area. What would we need to do to show six images in the DVD section of the Miami Vice article? Do the rules need to be modified or just grant an exception? Thanks FrankWilliams 12:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
However, the artwork of the DVd has to be noted and notable for inclusion, right? Otherwise, it's just decorative eye-candy. That has pretty much been the rule thus far. If the the text doesn't specifically refer to why that particular image is vitally important to have in the article, then it shouldn't be there. Thoughts? - Arcayne (cast a spell) 14:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
DVD cover art is unacceptable per #8 of WP:NFC since the title screen for the TV show is already used as the identifying image. There is zero indication that "its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding." This should be done by providing actual content about the DVD cover itself. It is not impossible -- there has been notable DVD packaging like Memento and Evil Dead. It's a matter of direct commentary on the cover art, otherwise the images are just decorative. Miami Vice seems formatted that there is a possible consensus to include all DVD covers, which is ridiculous. Why is even one acceptable, if it does not meet #8 in the slightest? This is an encyclopedia, and images should be incorporated in an encyclopedic fashion. The vast, vast majority of media has some kind of cover, or even multiple covers, but we do not (or we try not to) drown media articles in images of them because they have no bearing on the article. The DVD release table is perfectly sufficient without the use of images. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 16:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I've been plowing through CSD today, including a whole bunch of I3's - images uploaded as non commercial use only, educational use only, or for Wikipedia only. One of the license options we give people is that the creator has licensed this work for use on Wikipedia. It seems to me that this would suggest to the uploader that a non-commerical use only, educational use only, or Wikipedia use only image is okay. Then they upload their image and are immediately greeting with a massive tag telling them they fucked up. Since these images are not acceptable, this begs the question why allow people to select this tag in the first place? I understand that some non-com images are okay under a fair use guideline, but why not just immediately jump to the fair use rationale, instead of giving the impression that non-com images are okay? This just does not make sense to me. Natalie 23:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
[rant mode on] No, our forms shouldn't save images in a way that applies a giant "TO BE DELETED" warning. Our forms shouldn't save those images at all. For that matter, "lying to the computer" shouldn't matter either, because every image upload ought to be checked by hand to verify that the description has enough elements present to establish the validity of the license (i.e. sourcing, etc.). If Wikipedia were really serious about ensuring copyright validity, even GFDL-self and similar claims would require verification in the form of the uploader's name and contact information. If you want to be serious about respecting copyrights then you should really be serious about it. Mucking around with licensing "traps" is no substitute for actually validating the legitimacy of uploads. [end rant mode]. 136.152.153.227 23:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
includescript(...)
call. Once a "winner" is selected and has been properly polished and debugged we can then install it in the global script to make it run for everyone by default. If someone disables scripting they will simply get the standard "old" upload form, so no big danger there. --
Sherool
(talk)
19:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)Where should the description of the original copyright holder go in the image article? In the source section or in the description section? WP:NFCC#10 doesn't make this clear. Thanks. Merlin1981 01:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Due to renewed and consecutive deletions of images that I had uploaded I will significantly reduce the time I spent in the last year working for English and German Wikipedia.
I have only uploaded images that were accepted as "fair use" in the first place and images where I had allowance by the copyright holders.
For explanation I give these two examples.
(1) The article Website Pros had a picture of their headquarter in Jacksonville, Florida. It was taken from the website of the company. The image was deleted with the argument, "a free substitute can be created". The logic of this is astonishing. Do you expect me to travel from Germany to Florida to take a snapshot of this building? Yes, anyone else can, but nobody else does. Anyone could have written the article but nobody else did.
(2) In the deletion of this picture only two people were involved which is something I am very surprised of. It opposes any form of democratic procedure that is imaginable. One tags it, the other deletes it. Good team work!
I had the allowance of a world renowned photographer to use this picture in an article. The whole process took time and efforts to get the right to publish it in Wikipedia.
Obviously there are admins and users who nearly enjoy to delete work and time that others have invested. Proudly they call it their 20,000th edit. Disgusting.
I think this whole approach is misguided and harms Wikipedia. I see it as pure ideology of hardliners and purists.
Free text and free images shouldn't be confused. Wikipedia will never reach the quality of its articles with free images. Most of the free photos I saw in everyday Wikipedia articles are mediocre to say the best. The admins who have the majority at the time only think from their dogmatics and not from the needs for our users.
I am 51 year old and have a daily job to pay my bills. All time for Wikipedia is worthy extra time and I am not interested to spend my time with people who act in the way I've seen lately and tried to describe above.
Therefore in the future I will only update my existing articles and only start one or two new ones which I already have prepared.-- Peter Eisenburger 17:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
As an immediate result of my statement two other pages were tagged [2] [3] All articles had been reviewed by other admins (including "deletionsts") before. -- Peter Eisenburger 05:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I know that the editors who frequent this page are particular busy now. A few creative minds, however, would be sincerely appreciated.
What we have is Category:Free screenshots ... a category that is used, misused and abused. It is meant only for screenshots of free software (as in software that is licensed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, or other similar licenses). It regularly fills up, however, with screenshots of television shows, of regular run-of-the-mill photographs, etc. This would not be a problem, but it is rather tiring to go through the category over and over again.
Of course, if we could get more editors active in maintaining the categories, this would not be a problem. I don't, however, expect or demand anyone to do such a thing (though I would appreciate it!).
My question, then, is: What can be done about this situation? How can the process to keep inappropriate images out of the category or off of Wikipedia (if necessary) be streamlined? Can the criteria for inclusion in the category be made more obvious? How can our image licensing procedures be made more accessible?
I bring this here because something needs to be done. The current situation of increasing demands on we image and copyright folks and increasing image uploads seems, to me, to be untenable. This is a rather small and isolated category, yet it is currently in need of constant maintenance. How can we change that? -- Iamunknown 06:08, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone else think this is a silly way to tag images? From what I can gather, looking at the history of Template:Non-free use rationale, an "article" parameter has been added. It would make more sense to update all such images, rather than tag them for deletion. I've fixed this one, but some process seems to have broken down here. Can we please get systems in place before tagging starts? Carcharoth 14:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The ideal solution would be to get a bot to cross-reference CSD and Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink so that the recent images in Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink can be tidied up as well, rather than speedy deleted. Or find some way for the bots to recognise that only a minor fix is needed, and apply some suitable tag. Carcharoth 16:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
BCBot does not look for the inclusion/exclusion of that parameter. BCBot does look for the article name. weather or not its in that parameter doesnt matter. As for tagging images. BCBot does ignore images uploaded prior to January 1, 2007. see
this for images uploaded prior to jan 1, that have rationale problems.
βcommand
23:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
This is also being discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass image mistaggings by BetacommandBot. Carcharoth 04:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Getting the non-free image description correct is becoming more and more like the children's game
Simon says. It does not matter if all of the information is there, it must be in an exact format. And the format changes at random times. --
SWTPC6800
05:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I've opened a discussion on the next generation of our license (important since if we are going to get free media we have to have a license people like) at Wikipedia:GSFDL comments from as many as possible are requested. Geni 03:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
This is an extremely common use for copyrighted images, but we have no tag to track it. Part of the problem with this going on unregulated is that there are no standards for what constitutes a sufficient search for a PD image. I see this a lot where people are adding nonfree images and there are perfectly good free images in the LOC. This also could have mandatory birth/death parameters, so if someone says the subject was born in 1885 or so we could insist that a free image is probably out there somewhere. Any thoughts? Calliopejen1 17:49, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I moved this from a different section because it was straying from the topic. Calliopejen1 02:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Incidentially, I was looking at Template:Historic fur, and was wondering why you thought it was "a controversial stock rationale"? Because it might be more prone to deliberate overuse because deciding whether something is historic is more subjective than deciding whether something is an album cover? Does this mean that those who can judge such things properly have to cut and paste the rationales instead of using a template? Are there not ways to have the template, but monitor it for incorrect use? Carcharoth 04:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Simply as a procedural matter, our initial proposal for tempalted rationales only includes the four very basic cases (logos, album covers, book covers, and 2D / 3D artwork. We chose those because they're collectively very significant and also they're mostly uncontroversial. The idea is that once we have those four in palce, there will be a process for proposing and adding new ones to the list of approved templates, but only templates on that list will be deemed valid. If you jump the gun and start using a new template outside of the approval process it will start out as invalid on day one...and I really don't think we want to expand the list just yet because it's more important to get this thing in place than to get sidetracked over other templates that are more complicated or controversial. If we get too far afield the whole project could fall apart. So one thing at a time. Wikidemo 11:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
So, what is the copyright status of email text? I ask in the particular case of image:24-19-1.jpg, since it is basically a screenshot of an auto-reply email. Any ideas? Drewcifer 01:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Would images from http://www.nps.gov be considered free? I'm assuming so as it's a Federal agency. They give credit by name to the photographers in many instances of specific locations, but that is all. Would these be alright to use? This is a good specific example:
http://www.nps.gov/nr//travel/atlanta/cab.htm
On that page, the top right image is "Courtesy of..." a certain group, while the bottom one, as on this page, appears to be just listing the photographer's name. Any guidance would be helpful. • Lawrence Cohen 22:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
"Information presented on this website, unless otherwise indicated , is considered in the public domain. It may may be distributed or copied as is permitted by the law. Not all information on this website has been created or is owned by the NPS. If you wish to use any non-NPS material, you must seek permission directly from the owning (or holding) sources. NPS shall have the unlimited right to use for any purpose, free of any charge, all information submitted to NPS via this site except those submissions made under separate legal contract. NPS shall be free to use, for any purpose, any ideas, concepts, or techniques contained in information provided to NPS through this site."
http://www.nps.gov/disclaimer.htm ( SEWilco 00:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC))
The images in the article Israel Defense Forces ranks are mostly tagged with {{ GFDL}}, but are sourced to http://dover.idf.il/IDF/About/Insignia/דרגות+קצינים+נגדים+וחוגרים.htm. I cannot read Hebrew, but it appears that the images are under some fashion of copyright per the text at the bottom of the page: "צבא ההגנה לישראל © 2007 כל הזכויות שמורות RSS | תנאי שימוש" Can anybody here help out with this? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 00:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at de:Vorlage:Bild-PD-alt-100. An online translator turns it into this:
"The period of protection for the original collecting main of this file ran off most likely after the yardsticks of German copyright, which file therefore treated as in common-free. Note: This acceptance does not correspond accurately to the legal regulation. The probability for a pursuit by a holder of a right is however so small that the German-language Wikipedia bears the file. Thus the existence of a copyright protection is not impossible. For this publication the Uploader is responsible. This component should be used with files, whose original collecting mains are old between 100 and 150 years and whose author and/or its death date does not admit is (for older pictures please Vorlage:Bild PD old use)."
I think this means:
"It's probably public domain under German copyright law, but we don't have the information to be legally precise about it. It is very unlikely that a copyright holder exists, or will assert rights, therefore we host it on German Wikipedia, and not Commons, but the uploader is still responsible. Use this for files between 100 and 150 years old where you don't know the author or author death date. For older images, use PD-old."
Does this sound like something Wikipedia could use? Carcharoth 22:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I know people have talked about this before as an alternative to copyrighted photos, and I just noticed the awesome stippled portrait at Jorge Luis Borges. I contacted the uploader and he said he drew it and would be willing to draw a few more more if he had some spare time. He asked if there was a list somewhere of articles needing such illustrations.... Any ideas of important biographies that are missing free images? Calliopejen1 14:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm trying to find a picture of Christian August Friedrich Peters (1806-1880) to illustrate both his article and one of the sections at Astronomische Nachrichten. The best one I've found so far is here. Can anyone who know German help out with identifying the source of the picture? What is the copyright/public domain status here? Can we use that picture or not? (The picture is near the bottom of the page). Carcharoth 11:49, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Maybe I should just use {{ PD-US-1923-abroad}}? That might be simplest. I can't prove when it was published, but as was said above "about 80% of PD-US pictures on en.wiki are photos that were taken before 1923 but we have no proof of publication, so if we're not accepting this sort of images, we have a lot of deleting to do...". Carcharoth 02:41, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The effects of the effort to tighten non-free use can be easily seen in the image upload/deletion stats from this analysis. Dragons flight 01:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm more interested in why there are peaks of uploading. you would expect peaks in deletion, as that is a stop-start process internal to Wikipedia. I was under the impression that uploads were fairly steady, but it seems there are peaks in that as well. Are there groups of people or single people, that upload in large quantities? Carcharoth 02:03, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
And a jump from under 500 uploads/day to over 2500 uploads/day in two years - is that consistent with the overall growth of Wikipedia? Carcharoth 02:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Is that 2,500 non-free uploads a day or 2,500 total uploads a day? Some more data points I've been collecting for a few days regarding use of the non-free use rationale template: Template talk:Non-free use rationale#The count. Wikidemo 06:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I am announcing a proposal to change certain aspects of WP:NFCC#10, the part of policy about image description pages. This proposal would simplify the data required on image description pages of nonfree images. It would also allow for certain common use rationales (like a book cover image on the article about the book) to be obtained from templates.
The proposal does not change any other part of the nonfree content criteria. But, as conversation on this talk page indicates, making the image description pages easier to format correctly would make it easier to bring images into compliance and make it easier to detect new images that don't provide required information.
The proposal is at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal and its talk page is Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria/Proposal. This proposal was developed by conversation among User:Anetode, User:Betacommand, User:Wikidemo and me. We hope others will look over it and discuss it on the associated talk page. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I've archived part of the discussion on the proposal talk page to indicate that we had nearly unanimous consensus to adopt the proposal. Now that we've decided to do it, the real work comes. We need to design and propose the various templates, and get ready with implementation details. We're planning to take this live on Jan 1, 2008, but we ought to have everything in place long before then so there are no glitches. Let's keep the momentum going here. Wikidemo 15:35, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I've recently ran across another user who started tagging about 100 logos per night for lack of use rationale or source, without distinguishing between "legacy" images or appropriate non-free uses. This affects articles on some of the more important organizations in America - for example, Image:Marshall Field's logo.svg, Image:QwestLogo.png, Image:US Bancorp logo.png, Image:Norwest logo.png, Image:American Civil Liberties Union logo.png, Image:Salon.com logo.png, Image:Slate logo.png, Image:ZDNet logo.png, Image:Thomson logo.png, etc. In reviewing and spot checking I see many of the tags were in error, for example this one. I would guess from my examination an error rate of 10-20%, depending on your threshold for accepting a use rationale as legitimate.
I've tried to discuss this on the editor's talk page but she has not agreed to concentrate on the new images, try to save rather than deleting images, etc. I'm hoping we can just get everyone to agree to take things slow while we work on our new proposal. What I'm afraid of is that if mass tagging and deletion of old images continues it forces the issue at a time when we are making some real progress. So far Betacommand has himself agreed to concentrate on the newer images first, and we seem to have an understanding that others aren't going after the old images in bulk just yet. If that understanding holds I think we can get something in place - we seem to have agreement. If not, we may need to make it mandatory by adding something to NFCC or CSD. Wikidemo 09:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Before this dicussion becomes fully forgotten, I'd just like to express my thoughts. Firstly (to Chris.B). Please outline any part of my dialogue with Wikidemo that consitutes a personal attack. I happen to have respect for Wikidemo for being the kind of editor he is. Personal attacks are unnecessary and I strive to make sure that I maintain civility when editing any part of wikipedia. Secondly (to Wikidemo) the way in which you approached me, I felt, was accusatory, with the attitude that what I was doing was not allowed (i.e tagging images). I felt like you were trying to bully me into doing things your way ("consequences"). I know that probably wasn't your intention at all - I'm just letting you know how it felt being on the other side. What you were asking of me was something that I had the choice to refuse or accept, and either outcome was fine under policy. I couldn't seem to make it clear that I was allowed to not do what you asked. Even above ("she won't even participate in the discussion because she doesn't like "politics." "), you seem like you're belittling me for not wanting to get involved with part of the project I dislike. But it doesn't matter now.
As cohesion points out above "You will always have people acting under the strict rule of policy", although I was not acting under the strict rule, I was just exercising my right to do what policy says.
It just felt like I was being portrayed unfairly; I just wanted to make things clear.
Seraphim Whipp 12:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I see that OsamaKBOT adds no source tags. What is the normal way to make sources machine-readable so the same bot won't come back and tag it again? Is this an acceptable way to add a source so that a bot can recognise it? If not, then OsamaKBOT needs to instruct people on how to do this. I've notified the bot operator. Carcharoth 18:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
We are in a loop. Here it is: Creating a list of images that might or might not have a proper source listed = GOOD. Editing thousands of image pages (e.g., templating) in a way that may lead to images whose uploaders have followed all the rules, and which are thus legitimately resident on Wikipedia, being deleted (and doing all this without the approval of the Community) = REALLY FUCKING BAD. Your bot does both of these things, but the good does not cancel out the bad. This is why your bot would not have been allowed to exceed its 50-edit trial run, had you not decided to keep it running anyway, approval or no approval. --Dynaflow babble 15:10, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
OsamaK has a point there. User:STBotI does seem to be tagging images for lack of sources. I've dropped a note off on the bot operator's talk page and asked them to clarify here what is going on. It is entirely possible that he is using AWB and human oversight, as opposed to unsupervised automated bot editing. Carcharoth 10:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I had a problem with the bot myself; images tagged with a source and a license still got tagged for no source and or copyright. I talked it over with the botowner on IRC and on my talk page, but I am still just slightly annoyed by it. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 00:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Introduction:
Policy excerpts
The image or media description page contains the following:
It is important that you list the author of the image (especially if different from the source), which is important both for copyright and for informational purposes. Some copyright licenses require that the original author receive credit for their work. Examples:
Proposed change (in red)
10 Image description page. The image or media description page contains the following:
10 Image description page. The image or media description page contains the following:
Benefits
Jackaranga 09:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment - Thanks to Jackaranga for his interest in the problem of noncompliant images, but another proposal on the subject has recently gained nearly universal consensus (see heading earlier on this page, and Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal ). Jackaranga's proposal conflicts with the earlier one, so I do not think we should approve it. The earlier proposal follows what I believe is a strong consensus that all images need source information and use rationales, but calls for templates that greatly simplify the process of uploading and using images, tagging noncompliant images by bot, and fixing tagged images. Although film posters are not in our initial batch of templates to develop (those are logos, book covers, album covers, and 2D and 3D artwork), it would be a logical next step to propose something for film posters once we get the initial ones in place. The target date is January 1, 2008. In the meanwhile I don't think the deletion issue is as bad as Jackaranga suspects. Those doing the large-scale tagging and deletion efforts have agreed informally to direct their efforts to new images uploaded after January 1, 2007 for the time being, so the "legacy" images uploaded before then are getting a reprieve until we can figure out what to do. The current round of large-scale deletions began sometime in June or July, and since then they have vigilantly challenged new images uploaded without sources and use rationales. So we only have a five month window, from January to May of this year, where there are a lot of noncompliant images in immediate danger of deletion. That's a lot of images, but nowhere near 90%. I don't think we should move to a "common sense" test on whether sources are needed or not. Of course common sense should be applied to all rules, but we need more guidance than that. The simplest approach, which i think has wide consensus, is to require people to say what they know about where they got an image and who owns the copyright, at the time they do the uploading. There's strong consensus for continuing to require use rationales every time an image is used, and film posters are no exception. But we will be making the process easier. Wikidemo 10:02, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I read somewhere on Wikipedia that fair use images can be used on the main page for Today's Featured Article. However, after several searches around Wikipedia's fair use guidelines, I can't seem to find that bit of stipulation. Now, people on the request block for Today's Featured Article are opposing and bitching about articles that are being requested because "They don't have a free use image to use." Now, I know I saw this stipulation somewhere. Whether it's outdated or has been removed, I don't know. Could someone help me on this? Helltopay27 22:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I would appreciate the opinions of other users on whether this screenshot Image:JPvelociraptor.png from the Jurassic Park film is fair use in anything other than the Jurassic Park articles. I am pretty sure it isn't, as otherwise we could use any depiction of anything in the article of that thing which I am pretty sure would send Wikipedia the wrong side of fair use law. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 11:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I believe what Jackaranga was after was what I've put at Image:JPvelociraptor.png#Source. This was already obvious from the summary, which said the source was the film "Jurassic Park". I would point out to Jackaranga that copyright ownership can change over the years, so the requirement should be to give the copyright details at the time of uploading, not the present details. Carcharoth 16:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I always have new editors, some old, coming to me asking "what do you mean by critical commentary?", when I tell them that their non-free image does not meet WP:FU. Upon reviewing the guideline, which has changed a bit over time, I realized that "critical commentary" is used six times, and not one time do we actually explain what we mean by "critical commentary". I really think this guideline would benefit if there was an good explaination as to what "critical commentary" refers to for certain non-free images. Otherwise, it just because the same tireless debate over "well, I mentioned it, so that's critical commentary, right?" Even I have to admit that sometimes I'm unsure about the appropriate commentary for an image. Sometimes the image may be encyclopedic, but the right words might not come to any one editor's mind to establish why that image is necessary. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 03:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I have for some time been gradually trying to ensure that fair-use album cover images are not used in band articles. I last brought it here in August; here is the relevant archive. There was another relevant discussion here more recently.
My stance is (briefly) that using album covers in band articles is not good fair use (it contradicts the boilerplate text in the fair use license) and in many cases may also discourage people from uploading free images, where that is possible.
While wary of the danger of instruction creep, it might be worth having a specific clause in the policy that makes it clear that this sort of thing is not valid fair use. Wiggle-room could be left for truly exceptional cases, but I am concerned that each of these (what seem to me like) consensuses exists in isolation and there is not really a central point we can refer to on this, thus leading to the argument having to be refought for every single band article. Alternatively, it may be that I am wrong and that there is a project-wide consensus that this is, or may sometimes be, a valid fair use, although it is hard for me to see that. The same issues apply to book covers used in authors' articles, and maybe elsewhere too.
Here is the most recent manifestation of this lack of clarity. Your comments would be welcome, there or (preferably) here. -- John 20:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Album covers are a significant part of the brand image created by most professional bands and, obviously, a central element of their marketing. They thus provide valuable information—irreplacable by text alone or by free images—for articles on virtually all professional popular music acts. As for how many such images should be called upon to serve this significant purpose, that clearly varies from band to band, from article to article. To have a sweeping policy clause that their appearance in band articles is not valid fair use is (a) not supported legally and (b) does not best serve Wikipedia's mission. We can promote the use of free images and the judicious use of fair-use images without restricting the latter in a way that unnecesarily undermines the quality of the encyclopedia.— DCGeist 21:03, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
"The use of non-free media in lists, galleries, discographies, and navigational and user-interface elements usually fails the test for significance (criterion #8), and if it fails this test such use is unacceptable.
Here are other images that if non-free would almost certainly not satisfy the policy.
1. An album cover as part of a discography, as per the above. Album covers in band articles, and book covers in author pages, are not automatically good fair use. Additional fair use of this kind would have to be justified by a special rationale on the image page showing the unique contribution the image makes to every article in which its use is proposed." ...
"The use of non-free media in lists, galleries, discographies, and navigational and user-interface elements usually fails the test for significance (criterion #8), and if it fails this test such use is unacceptable.
Here are other images that if non-free would almost certainly not satisfy the policy.
1. An album cover as part of a discography, as per the above. Album covers in band articles, and book covers in author pages, are not automatically good fair use. A separate and specific rationale must be provided on the image page for every particular use of a given fair-use image showing the unique contribution the image makes to every article in which its use is proposed." ...
I've drafted something which seems to balance our wish to use these images occasionally under special circumstances with the principle of minimizing the use of nonfree images which the project has adopted. It is not perfect I am sure, but I think it would be better than the current situation. -- John 07:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Somebody please help me decode this discussion on album cover images. After all of the back and forth, above, I am not certain exactly where the discussion ended up: are we or are we not allowed to use an album cover image on an album's page? If we are allowed, then what fair use criterion should we cite? BTW, I did "get" that we need to provide a copyright citation (and credit if known). Thanks. Christopher Rath 00:26, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry, but there is a slow motion edit war at [5] over whether quotes used in user space violate the guidelines for non-free content.
As silly as it seems, the anon does appear to be correct that the terms of WP:NFCC, as presently written, do seem to exclude the use of non-free text (i.e. quotes) outside of article space. Dragons flight 21:13, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
It says under the 'Unacceptable images' section that 'An album cover as part of a discography' is not allowed. However, it is my understanding in accordance with WP:FUC, if a band's article does not have separate articles for each respective album, then it is not a fair-use violation to have those album covers under the band's discography. This 'content guideline' contradicts the official policy of WP:FUC. Is anyone opposed to rewording the sentence to read 'An album cover as part of a discography, which has separate articles for the respective albums' or something similar? Please offer input. Thank you. — Christopher Mann McKay talk 20:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)