I just logged in to commons, and found a note reporting a problem with
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bush_War_Budget_2003-crop.jpg
This, as noted in the text, is a crop of
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bush_War_Budget_2003.jpg
which is found to be
public domain.
Those paying close attention will note that the cropped image also has special code in
the title, ("-crop") indicating that its a crop of another image. Nevertheless the
image got flagged.
This presents itself as a problem as Ive noticed a certain automation, and sadly a lack
of intelligence,
in flagging particular images. A more productive usage of time would be to simply
reference the
given link, and add the appropriate information.
Stevertigo
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Earlier today I started a discussion at the village pump about whether or
not the English Wikisource should outsource all its image uploading
(including scanned texts for transcripting/proofreading) to Commons. Sorry
for the email, but I know that many admins may not be frequently checking
the village pump. If any of you have something to contribute to the
discussion, please do so. Thanks.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Wikisoure:Image_use_…
Nathaniel (User:Spangineer)
Please don't spam user-talk pages with generic warnings. (No source/no
license/copyvionote)
Why? Because it's counter-productive and therefore a waste of your time.
If you notice a user already has a dozen recent warnings, or if you've
got 10 more to add, instead of adding another one which they're just
as likely to ignore, take the time to write a short sharp warning
explaining
* specifically what they're doing wrong (not "violating copyright" -
"uploading logos" "uploading screenshots" "uploading random images
from the web")
* why it's wrong (like: source is require for all images - logos are
considered unfree - screenshots don't take any new copyright)
* relevant policy pages (usually Commons:Licensing)
* where they can ask for help (their talk page, if you watch it, your
talk page, Commons:Help desk / Village pump in their language)
* the principle of WHEN IN DOUBT, ASK BEFORE UPLOADING.
* that if they upload any more files and ignore what you've taken the
time to say, then they will be blocked.
And if they do that, then block them. If you're not an admin, ask one
to block them.
While they're blocked they can still edit their talk page. This is a
good chance to drill home source/licensing requirements and the like,
if they stick around.
The aim of the warnings is to try and make users understand the
importance of various copyright requirements. Spamming their talk page
is not further to that aim, so it should be avoided. "Notifying the
uploader" is not the real aim: making them understand is.
As a rough guide, I would say first block, 1 or 3 days. Second block,
3 days or a week. Third block, a week or a month. Fourth block, I'd
want to know a very good reason why it shouldn't be permanent. It all
depends on the specific circumstances of course, like exactly how many
images they're uploading, if they're giving false licenses, if they're
responding to messages and warnings, if there's a language barrier,
etc.
regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
Danny, when you get it finalized, to aid in the domino effect of persuading
local repositories iit would be real nice if you contacted someone big like
NPR or other media outlets for doing a story on it. If local repositories
understand that established, significant collections such as LOC are doing
this, it really removes a lot of skepticism, and provides formidable ass
protection for bureaucrats whose sole job function appears to be job
preservation. I have talked to one fellow at auch a collection and he
thinks the idea is great, but is hesitant about how the conservative
curators and board members would feel about such new fangled concepts.
I resolved to do it guerrila style but going through the front door would be
a lot more efficient and beneficial for all concerned.
-Mak
---------------------
daniwo59 at aol.com daniwo59 at aol.com
Thu Jul 13 19:48:58 UTC 2006
That said, I still think we should wait until this is formalized.
...
as Sabine pointed out, to begin looking at other repositories as well.
Danny
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Hello
As some of you may know, Brad and I were in DC for most of this week, where
we werre joined by Mindspillage and NullC for some fascinating meetings with
people from the Smithsonian, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Library of
Congress, and the National Geographic Society. One of the primary purposes
of these meetings was to identify content that we can use for our projects,
including Wikisource. The meetings were very informative and productive.
Given that there are certain legal issues involved, I will wait for Brad to
describe in greater depth the outcome of these meetings. I will, however,
describe two meetings that may have more immediate results for the Wikisource
and Commons communities.
Mindspillage and I had a great meeting with Lawrence (Larry) Swiader, the
Deputy CIO of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has given us permission to
use any and all of the material created and licensed by that Museum according
to the terms of our license. This includes images, video, video transcripts,
audio, and text, including the new Holocaust encyclopedia that they are
building on line (in seven languages), and which they plan to be the most
comprehensive encyclopedia of its kind in the world. All they are asking for in
return in attribution. Essentially, although this was not said in so many words,
they are releasing all of their in-hourse material according to the terms of
the GNU-FDL. Larry was especially excited by the prospect of our people
participating in the translation effort. I would like to point out that this is an
outstanding repository of material, not just about World War II and the
Holocaust, but about other modern instances of genocide, including Armenia,
Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur. They have no problem whatsover with our translating
their proprietary formats into free software formats such as .ogg files.
At the end of our meeting, we discussed the need for a contract to formalize
this agreement. Brad will be drafting one to send to their counsel, and
things should be underway quickly. In the meantime, I encourage you to look
through their materials and see what is there.
The Library of Congress meeting was also quite spectacular. They also have
enormous archives which they are willing to share, but I am noting here that
some of their materials still fall under copyright so greater caution must be
exercised. Over the next few weeks, we will better identify what is there for
the taking.
During our talks, they made mention of the fact that many important
historical documents may have been scanned, but they have not yet been transcribed.
One of the repositories mentioned was the Thomas Jefferson archives at
Monticello. Speaking of this particular archive, they told us that the work was so
daunting that the Jefferson people (and other groups as well) have taken to
outsourcing the transcription work to India. I would like to suggest to the
current Wikisource team and additional volunteers that we jump at this
opportunity to help in the realtime preservation of these documents, which are of
enormous historical importance. My other suggestion is that we contact these
organizations in an organized manner, rather than as individuals, so that we
appear organized and do not duplicate efforts.
Finally, we have now contacted some of the most important repositories of
content in the United States and we were welcomed by them. I encourage
Wikimedians in other countries, representing other languages, to make the same
coordinated effort with their local repositories in their respective languages.
More to come,
Danny
Hello Commonsfolk and recently subscribed admins,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Orgullobot/Welcome_log
This is another plea for assistance on the Welcome log. PLEASE HELP us
check it, even if it's only two users each day. There is a backlog of
nearly two weeks.
Newbies make a ton of mistakes and catching them early and correcting
them is one way to cut down on future workload in terms of reducing
required unlinking of images that need to be deleted, stopping problem
uploaders earlier and reduce 'orphan' uncategorised images.
After you've corrected their mistakes and left them a note explaining
what they're doing wrong, if necessary, please remove their name from
the list. It's very straightforward.
Please help... even if you just look for some 'easy' users that had
made no mistakes and remove their names from the list.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Orgullobot/Welcome_log
thanks,
Brianna
User:pfctdayelise
PS: If you don't have 'quick nominate as no source/no license/for
deletion + notify uploader' links installed, you might like to. See
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Quick-delete.js
As Mindspillage can verify, my mouth dropped when they made the offer. I
asked all of the questions you asked (at least a half dozen times each) and they
were quite firm in their belief that the idea is to get information to the
world.
That said, I still think we should wait until this is formalized.
Nevertheless, the door is wide open, and this can be an important incentive, as Sabine
pointed out, to begin looking at other repositories as well.
Danny
Paddy brings up something very interesting with regard to the newspaper's use.
A coat of arms consists of two different things: the heraldic definition and the graphic representation. Typically, where a city has a copyright on its COA, it is only a graphic representation that the city or locality has copyrighted. A heraldic definition may be artistically interpreted, thereby circumventing the city's copyright on the COA. The legal definitions vary from country to country.
For instance, in the United States, the graphical representation that most states use as seals are the copyrighted property of the US state in question, and therefore are not considered free. However, a graphical representation of the seal may be used in its place as the "state seal".
This, of course, will not satisfy a good many of our end users, who will see anything but what the state/city uses, to the exact pixel, as "wrong", thereby eliminating its use at any project that disallows "fair use" images.
It also should be noted that an artistic representation of a COA is copyrightable, and therefore must be released prior to upload.
Cary Bass
"Bastique"
>
> From: "Zachary Harden" <zscout370(a)hotmail.com>
> Date: 2006/07/06 Thu AM 05:03:55 EDT
> To: commons-l(a)wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] COA copyright policies and other legal stuff,..
>
> Dear Paddy,
>
> I just think it depends on the nations that the coat of arms are registered
> in. Some might have Public Domain status granted to them since Day One of
> use, while others have to sit through the test of time. While I am not
> familiar with Slovak law, I would wait and see what it says before we take
> any action.
>
> Rgds, Zach
>
>
> >From: Patrick-Emil Zörner <paddyez(a)yahoo.de>
> >Reply-To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)wikimedia.org>
> >To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)wikimedia.org>
> >Subject: [Commons-l] COA copyright policies and other legal stuff,..
> >Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 09:01:00 +0200 (CEST)
> >
> >Since Eric was posting a hint on all common admins talk pages I use
> >this opportunity to talk about a subject I strongly feel about.
> >
> >BTW I am subscribing to this ML and have been since the beginning. The
> >reason I have not been reading the ML or making posts here is a
> >completly differnt one.
> >
> >When I was trying to go through the deletion tags to dispose images
> >that are against the commons policy I found the following:
> >
> >http://commons.wikimedia.org//wiki/Template%3ASlovakCityCOA
> >
> >Concerning COAs my believe always was that we have to care about:
> >
> >1) Copyright(, Urheberrecht,...) whatever it may be in your country
> >2) It must be commercial.
> >3) People must be able to modify it.
> >
> >To 1) in most cases we do not need to care about that dealing with
> >COAs since they are ooooooooooold.
> >However the points 2) and 3) make me feel uneasy and I know there was
> >a long discussion on de WP.
> >
> >Concerning point 2) some of you might know that the german newspaper
> >"Die Zeit" was using the COA of the federal state and city Hamburg and
> >needed to change the COA on the front cover because of a senat
> >decision in Hamburg. Personally I think that such a behaviour is
> >silly. I mean it is not like they have been printing toilet paper with
> >the COA of Hamburg and selling the stuff. Even printing the COA of a
> >town on t-shirts and selling them could cause legal trouble IMHO.
> >
> >To 3) the Brockhaus Multimedial (a germen encyclopedia on DVD) uses
> >stylised COAs. I totally do not get why they did that. What I am
> >saying is that this could be interpreted as a modification plus
> >commercial use. Modifing a COA and selling the stuff on some
> >merchandising items could cause legal problems too IMHO.
> >
> >Summary: I do not think that COA go 100% with wikimedia project
> >policies concerning points 2 and 3. Personally I even think that COAs
> >as a picture in an encyclopedia are nice to have but not necessary.
> >But since they seem accepted in the Wikimedia projects commons should
> >keep them all and without exception since they are PD with some legal
> >framework attached to them. Therfore I suggest that in cases like the
> >slovak COA we ignore the terms of use and leave it up to the one that
> >uses these images to read the terms of use. The slovak terms of use do
> >not even seem very strikt as far as I can understand the language.
> >
> >Last but not least I think that the wikimedia projects had the wrong
> >approach dealing with COAs. They should IMHO have waived using them.
> >Only COAs that had 100% leagal permissions from the city/country
> >should have been used. While the WM-projects were growing there could
> >have been an open window to leagaly enforce WM-projects to use the
> >COAs because the cities would have wanted us to use them because
> >without saying the WM-projects make even the smallest town known in
> >the internet.
> >
> >What do you think?
> >
> >greetings
> >
> >Paddy
>
>
>
>
Since Eric was posting a hint on all common admins talk pages I use
this opportunity to talk about a subject I strongly feel about.
BTW I am subscribing to this ML and have been since the beginning. The
reason I have not been reading the ML or making posts here is a
completly differnt one.
When I was trying to go through the deletion tags to dispose images
that are against the commons policy I found the following:
http://commons.wikimedia.org//wiki/Template%3ASlovakCityCOA
Concerning COAs my believe always was that we have to care about:
1) Copyright(, Urheberrecht,...) whatever it may be in your country
2) It must be commercial.
3) People must be able to modify it.
To 1) in most cases we do not need to care about that dealing with
COAs since they are ooooooooooold.
However the points 2) and 3) make me feel uneasy and I know there was
a long discussion on de WP.
Concerning point 2) some of you might know that the german newspaper
"Die Zeit" was using the COA of the federal state and city Hamburg and
needed to change the COA on the front cover because of a senat
decision in Hamburg. Personally I think that such a behaviour is
silly. I mean it is not like they have been printing toilet paper with
the COA of Hamburg and selling the stuff. Even printing the COA of a
town on t-shirts and selling them could cause legal trouble IMHO.
To 3) the Brockhaus Multimedial (a germen encyclopedia on DVD) uses
stylised COAs. I totally do not get why they did that. What I am
saying is that this could be interpreted as a modification plus
commercial use. Modifing a COA and selling the stuff on some
merchandising items could cause legal problems too IMHO.
Summary: I do not think that COA go 100% with wikimedia project
policies concerning points 2 and 3. Personally I even think that COAs
as a picture in an encyclopedia are nice to have but not necessary.
But since they seem accepted in the Wikimedia projects commons should
keep them all and without exception since they are PD with some legal
framework attached to them. Therfore I suggest that in cases like the
slovak COA we ignore the terms of use and leave it up to the one that
uses these images to read the terms of use. The slovak terms of use do
not even seem very strikt as far as I can understand the language.
Last but not least I think that the wikimedia projects had the wrong
approach dealing with COAs. They should IMHO have waived using them.
Only COAs that had 100% leagal permissions from the city/country
should have been used. While the WM-projects were growing there could
have been an open window to leagaly enforce WM-projects to use the
COAs because the cities would have wanted us to use them because
without saying the WM-projects make even the smallest town known in
the internet.
What do you think?
greetings
Paddy
___________________________________________________________
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de
Welcome to all the new subscribers to this mailing list. :-)
A few recent policy updates:
The practice of overwriting images with red crosses when a "superior"
version is available is to be considered deprecated. In other words:
please don't do it anymore.
Please only delete redundant files if they are no longer in use
anywhere in Wikimedia. Use the "check usage" tab on the file
description page to do so. For the PNG=>SVG transition, tagging
obsolete PNGs with [[Template:SupersededSVG]] is preferable to
deleting or overwriting old images.
Overwriting files by someone else should be done with extreme caution,
especially if the file is in use in Wikimedia. In most cases, it will
be preferable to upload an alternative version, and point people to
it. Many photographers understandably do not appreciate it if their
work is substantially altered -- even more so, if that alteration is
made on Commons and silently propagates to a project that uses the
photo.
That is not to say that the "wiki principle" of editing does not apply
to images and other media files. Consensus and caution are just much
more advisable here due to the crossing of project and language
barriers.
There has been a lot of recent tension between users from other
projects, and Commons admins, and I hope that these changes will
improve cross-project cooperation.
Arnomane and Duesentrieb have been working on updating the Deletion Guidelines:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Deletion_guidelines&…
There is also ongoing discussion about these issues on the Village Pump:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump
Best,
Erik