Commons-l August 2008

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

50 participants
23 discussions

GIFAR vulnerability and commons
by Daniel Schwen 13 Aug '08

13 Aug '08

A more (or less) new form of exploit has just been published [1]. By appending a Java-Archive (JAR) file to an Image file (JPG/GIF) a hybrid file can be created which will validate as both a valid JAR and a valid image. The file can be uploaded to an image host and included as a Java-Applet on any page on any host. The applet will have privileges to connect back to the originating host and operate with all the account holders privileges. Commons seems to be a target for such an attack. Upload is easy, although I'm not to sure about the damage potential. I suppose if an administrators account would get compromised an applet could be manufactured to mass delete content or mass block users. Anyhow. I was just surprised that nobody posted this already. [1] http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/01/A_photo_that_can_steal_your_onlin… -- [[en:User:Dschwen]] [[de:Benutzer:Dschwen]] [[commons:User:Dschwen]]

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Re: [Commons-l] [Wikitech-l] GIFAR vulnerability and commons
by Daniel Schwen 12 Aug '08

12 Aug '08

> > Sending this on to wikitech-l so the devs can comment on it. > > Replied on commons-l and fixed for default MediaWiki installations in > r39203. What did you fix? Nothing on the Wikimedia servers, right? Because I have now confirmed, that the applet can be made into originating from commons using Special:FilePath and it can connect back to commons (that involved uploading a new version of my gifar). http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/test.html (the second applet loads user.gif from commons.wikimedia.org)

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Philip Greenspun illustration project Round 1 is now open
by Brianna Laugher 10 Aug '08

10 Aug '08

Hi all, I am happy to announce that Round 1 of the Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP) is now open. The request list is published here: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Round_…> It will run for two months. Then in conjunction with Cary and Erik we will assess how Round 1 went, adjust as necessary and (with any luck :)) carry on with Round 2. In case you are wondering "What is PGIP?", it's a project that was enabled by a donation of Philip Greenspun to the Wikimedia Foundation for the purpose of creating illustrations. The original community announcement by Cary was here <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034531.html> and the central place for all PGIP info has been on meta, here: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project> So basically it's 1) collect requests for illustrations and 2) pay people to make them. If you are interested in the project and/or interested in creating illustrations, please join the mailing list: <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/greenspun-illustrations> and please also check out the information on meta. If you are wondering why it took like ten months, I wrote a bit of an explanation here. <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/R….> I will probably have more to say over the next couple of weeks about ways people can help. For now, I'd just like your help spreading the word to any illustrators you know that might not have heard of this project yet. thanks, Brianna user:pfctdayelise -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/

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Commons election suffrage discussions/draft poll
by Joe Szilagyi 10 Aug '08

10 Aug '08

In case anyone missed it, there is a discussion in regards to suffrage for voting on Commons, a followup to the prior poll of several months that showed support for such a thing. This a much re-focused and simplified possibly final stab at it. Please review at your leisure: Initial discussion: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Administrators/Requests_and_… Draft poll: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Administrators/Requests_and_… - Joe

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ShakataGaNai blocked me for a week
by szwedzki 10 Aug '08

10 Aug '08

Semen2.jpg file was deleted by Szczepan1990 after a community vote, initiated on June 23rd.: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Semen2.jpg In a few hours' after the deletion, a user initiated an undeletion request and despite a few voices pro and one heavy opposition (and not even a word of comment to add to that), the file was undeleted after 20 hours (!). I broke the vote back to the previous status, because of his doubts over the process. After revert file was undeleted again and ShakataGaNai blocked me for a week. Such files are very delicate in terms of building a (preferably positive!) image of the project, i think. If a user (Richiex, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Richiex) converts Commons into a self-pseudo-pornographic picture gallery with own private parts, this calls for immediate reaction. Additionally, files that have their equivalents of a better quality ought to be removed in my opinion. If my statement is called vandalism... Multichill wrote in my talk: "Dear Szwedzki, please see the deletion guidelines. You deleted several pictures which are in use at wikipedia articles so clearly in Commons:Scope.". Oh yeah: "Private image collections and the like are generally not wanted. Wikimedia Commons is not a web host for e.g. private party photos, self-created artwork without educational purpose and such. There are plenty of other projects in the Internet you can use for such a purpose, like Flickr and others." regards szwedzki http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Szwedzki

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help needed searching for pagescans and front covers
by John Vandenberg 08 Aug '08

08 Aug '08

We have a complaint about Wikisource having a censored edition of a work by Robert E. Howard: http://praxeology.net/blog/2008/08/08/he-picked-picts-to-depict/ It is in regards to: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wings_in_the_Night by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Howard There is no Wikipedia article for it, and only a few mentions which might help write a new article: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=howard+"Wings+in+the+Night"+-"List+of+works+by+Robert+E.+Howard"+site%3Aen.wikipedia.org To be honest, this blogger is spot on. Our editions for these stories are terrible, usually being uploaded by one person from a crappy online edition, altered to partial conform to another crappy online edition of unknown provenance :- rinse and repeat, until we have a very crappy edition indeed. Example: http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Call_of_Cthulhu&limit=100&ac… Weird Tales, and the many stories by Howard and Lovecraft, are mostly in the public domain, but they are incredibly hard to find pagescans of. archive.org has none that I can see: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Robert%20E.%20Howard%20AND%20mediat… I would rather have crappy editions on Wikisource rather than none at all, as it does invite more discussion and participation, and I think the key is to construct the best catalog possible, so that everyone links to us for their bibliographic data. I made a start on this last time I got a bit motivated on this topic: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales There is heaps of bibliographic data within easy reach on various author pages: http://www.google.com.au/search?q="weird+tales"+site%3Aen.wikisource.org There are a lot of sites that provide images of the front covers, which are mostly PD and could be uploaded to Commons. http://members.aol.com/weirdtale1/covers23-32.htm Slightly related, user Atomicsteve did some fantastic work along these lines with US-PD-no-renewal comics. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Atomicsteve http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Atomicsteve It looks like some people are making pagescans available, .. for a price: http://members.aol.com/weirdtales/moreinfo.htm Is there any way we can organise a "bounty" with the foundation for donations to be collated and put towards purchasing pagescans of these rare items? One source of hope is a PGDP project for "H.P. Lovecraft's Writings in the United Amateur (1915-1922)". No other related PGDP projects that I can see. http://www.pgdp.net/c/project.php?id=projectID41ef39d98f43c&detail_level=4 and in the PGDP forum is the following: "As a bonus, I've uploaded the rest of Lovecraft in the United Amateur to a image hosting site, if you're curious about what was written in 1924 or want to help clear part of it. It's only 6 pages. http://bayimg.com/eAEKIAabJ http://bayimg.com/EaekKaabj http://bayimg.com/faeKgAaBj http://bayimg.com/fAekiAABJ http://bayimg.com/FAEKjaaBJ http://bayimg.com/GaekFAabJ" -- John Mark Vandenberg

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I want to donate the content of a rare photography book to Wikimedia.
by Adam Cuerden 06 Aug '08

06 Aug '08

Dear everyone. I am in possession of a book, "The University of Glasgow Old and New". (Partial details: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/july2008.html). My copy is #22 of 50, I believe there was also a cheaper edition of 150 or 250. I really want to make this available to Wikipedia, but need help: The book is relatively tightly bound, and the spine gets in the way of the scanner. I need someone with either a scanner that doesn't have a one-inch bit of plastic between the scanner bed and the edge of the scanner, thus cutting off the photos, or a photographer able to take high-quality photos of the photos. I would also like to donate copies of some very large (A0 and A1) medical posters, from the series "Supplement to the Anatomy of Labour". These are a bit delicate, though not ridiculously so, but I'd be uncomfortable running them through a strip scanner. If someone has a sufficiently large flatbed, or can take photos of them, let's do this. Please help, I've been trying to get these to Wikipedia for 6 months now. Thank you, Adam Cuerden

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People trying to withdraw their released images
by Joe Szilagyi 06 Aug '08

06 Aug '08

Posting here as sometimes the admin noticeboard seems a bit too quiet... I've seen comments that this is happening more frequently now, where [[User:Foo]] will suddenly say, "I withdraw release/copyrights/permission/I just want all these 20-100+ images removed from Commons". I had one that I reverted on 10 or so images the other day where the uploader wanted images--good ones at that--from 2006 deleted because Google was indexing them on Commons. They were all images of random streets in another country. Should the upload forms be more clear/explicit and politely in-your-face that once material is released under copyleft/GFDL, you can't technically undo that? - Joe

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Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is looking for content
by Daniel Kinzler 06 Aug '08

06 Aug '08

The Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is looking for content, see <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase> The want to "show off free culture artists" and want audio and video under CC-BY-SA - I'm not sure we have much to offer them (do we?), but I suppose we'd be interested in at least of some of the submittions. So... maybe we could strike up some sort of collaboration? A Project on commons to make/collect/suggest content for them? Or ask them to tell people about commons? I'm wondering if the content they want is really stuff we don't want (your neighbours garage band), or maybe stuff that could be extremely usefull to use ("example of a trumpet solo")? what do you think? -- Daniel PS: I think they could showcase a collection of backdrops and screensaver images from commons, btw :)

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iPhone upload problem
by Magnus Manske 05 Aug '08

05 Aug '08

Problem: * > 2 million iPhone users * built-in camera plus "always-on" network connection = ideal Commons shoot-and-upload tool * but : upload to Commons from iPhone doesn't work (can't chose local file on iPhone) However: You can email photos you have taken quite easily. Should we establish some service around that? Like: * log into Commons (once) * mail image from iPhone to selfupload(a)commons.wikimedia.org (or whatever) * get emailed back a URL with your (temporary) file in a form, pre-filled: ** File name is title of your mail ** Description is the body of your mail ** GFDL and CC-BY-SA-3.0 chosen (self-made) ** Author field is a link to your user name (you're logged in, after all) ** Date is extracted from EXIF data ** Coordinates are pre-filled if you had the iPhone add the GPS data ** OTRS can be automatically filed and added to the form Would also be useful for non-iPhone uploads... Magnus

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Commons-l August 2008