While Michel Vuijlsteke's points are excellent, and I agree that editors should be encouraged to be patient and welcoming to new editors, there may be a problem with the file. That said, a deletion nomination is not a good way to respond to a file problem. I find that Safari does not display the preview of File:Van_istendael675.jpg correctly. It displays as a dark negative image. Camino does not display the preview and comments as follows on the file itself. "The image “http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Van_istendael675.jpg ” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors." Google Chrome displays the file and preview properly. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_istendael675.jpg Walter Siegmund On Feb 22, 2011, at 9:32 AM, David Gerard wrote:

Speaking of friendliness on Commons, does CategorizationBot really need to post notices on both the File pages and User Talk pages? Maarten? This seems overly aggressive to me. Ryan Kaldari

The categories is one issue that can be addressed, by changing the upload page, at the moment its in the section marked *upload options* that should be moved/reworded so its not an option. The other is to make it a text field rather than the + so that it can be a compulsory field. The wording of templates has been distilled down to the simplist cleanest coldest plainest language possible to facilitate multilingual nature of Commons and that comes across as being agressive and unfriendly. A philosphical point is that we hold is that once an image is released we actively discourage the author taking, holding ownership of the image we expect them to accept what ever the community decides to do with the image. Yet the moment there's an issue we expect them to take ownership and address the problems, obviously if its a license issue they have to but for any other issue it shouldnt be, we should notify about discussions involving an image but it should be as a courtesy and the language should reflect that courtesy. We have scripts for closing the deletion discussion so it should not be too hard to modify them to identify the Uploader and advise them of the outcome, again as a courtesy. Commons culture is that of a battlefield, with roving gangs/cabals who work together to achieve their aims and its getting worse, one just needs to look at FPC to see how bad its become. What we need is to develope and encourage authors to be proud of their original contributions, we need to encourage the community to respect those contributions, we need to encourage the community appreciate what is being contributed QI & VI does that FP did. Rather than hire admins maybe the foundatin could support a small grant system to get more content or to address backlogs, ie $200 grant for an editor to spend 40 hours clearing backlogs, or translating pages or categorising uncategorised images. On 23 February 2011 06:02, Neil Kandalgaonkar <neilk(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: -- GN. Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com

... we already see is that what is currently in place doesnt work and that the notifications are putting people off further contributions. If it starts to create categories, then thats useful because it shows that what we use isnt what others are looking for.... we need to recognise that then address it ... On 23 February 2011 11:07, Kevin Morgan <morgankevinj(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- GN. Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com

On 23 February 2011 02:49, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote: And it still comes as robotic and preremptory. Utter failure with the best of intentions is still utter failure. Improving a wrong approach to perfection does not make it work. No, I don't have a ready alternative. That doesn't make a failure a success either. - d.

Now that's constructive. I would love to see something like that on Commons. But surely this is not the first time this is suggested, and this has been rejected for a reason? Guillaume Le 23/02/2011 15:58, Paul Houle a écrit :

Why is and why should "Ownership" be such a big deal, what ever the re-use license the author is still the image owner and always will be. Commons best resource is always going to be our contributors because they make Commons unique we should be encouraging that resource, but we dont infact we drive our best contributors away by niggling at them by limiting them from promoting themselves(no customer user attributions boxes on image pages) but we let images sourced from FLICKR do just that and we even promoted FLICKR with custom boxes on the image pages, the same goes for other GLAM-type institutions that have contributed works they give a small resolution image in return they get a custom box with link back to where people are charged for larger images even on PD images. I think we should be about improving the authors experience and valuing their efforts more, Wikinews has three pages for each article, *collaboration and opinions* so the background setup is there maybe we can have three tabs as well,*file,talk,feedback * with feed back being solely about commenting on the image aspects On 23 February 2011 23:20, Siebrand Mazeland <s.mazeland(a)xs4all.nl> wrote: -- GN. Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com

Hi Kevin, Op 23 feb 2011 om 04:07 heeft Kevin Morgan <morgankevinj(a)gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:\ Did you recently use the upload interface? It contains hotcat which works exactly how you describe it. That's exactly what the categorization bot does. The uploaded only gets notified if the categorization bot is unable to find any categories. Maarten

On 2/23/11 9:22 AM, Daniel Schwen wrote: Yes, we do - because the bots are so very often mistaken, and because what is normal in some cultures is unspeakably rude in others. I personally find the overall level of politeness just barely tolerable. Would it be that hard to keep track of users' contribution levels, and gradually prune down bot messages accordingly? It's vaguely insulting when some noob's first bot gives me a long lecture about Commons policy, apparently unaware that I had a hand in formulating it in the first place! Another possibility is to send new contributors' bot messages to a welcoming commmittee volunteer, let them decide whether to forward verbatim, or take a more constructive approach ("no you didn't forget to license, you typed "GDFL" instead of "GFDL"). Stan

Way to set an example for the "Friendliness"... Quite extensively construed to make my point into "Generalising from oneself". Whatever.

On 23 February 2011 19:48, Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de> wrote: For someone going on (and on) about how thick-skinned everyone else should be, you're remarkably thin-skinned yourself. (This is, of course, a frequent pattern amongst those who think others should be less sensitive to the speaker's incredible rudeness.) - d.

On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 9:02 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Since personal attacks appear to have become acceptable on this list, let me get down to that road as well. Your rude dismissal of any ideas that you do not agree with will not improve Commons and refusal to discuss them in any other way than attacking the person stating them, does not help this discussion, and is wasting time of many people, so please stop commenting on this mailing list. Bryan

On 23 Feb 2011, at 20:21, Bryan Tong Minh wrote: That really isn't helpful, and definitely is not acceptable, neither here nor anywhere else on Wikimedia. Please focus on the point: how do we make Wikimedia Commons friendlier, and generally increase the number of both contributors and administrators on the project? One potential improvement could be getting bot messages translated and made friendlier via translatewiki.net, so that the burden of maintaining all of the different language versions of the same message is taken off the bot writer and given to translators in a central location. I'm not sure if Gerard Meijssen is on this mailing list - I've cc'd him in the hope that he can provide input on this. Thanks, Mike

That is what I said That, however, is not what I said. The root of the problem (as far as i see it) is not that any one is actively "doing things that discourage people from participating". It is the dissonance between peoples expectations of what commons "should do for them" versus what commons "can do for them" with the limited resources we have. That is kind of easy to say. It is not like commons currently has much of a choice. Without the help of countless bots there would be no way to deal with the workload. And we could not even think about growth. We cannot afford to tell bot operators who spend their time writing and maintaining the code to sit down and write a zillion translated pieces of lengthy prose or else their bots are blocked. Sorry, but the lesson should rather be to listen what those people have to say rather than shut down.

On 23 February 2011 21:26, Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de> wrote: It is entirely unclear that the work the bots do - which assumes a model wherein contributors have no ownership of images until there is a problem, at which point they are expected to hop to it - is actually doing the right job. As has been noted, the model does not work well with how contributors actually contribute. The argument you're putting here appears to be that we can't improve the process because the present (broken) process is already very hard. I submit that this is not a good or useful objection to discussion of the brokenness of the present process. - d.

On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Maarten Dammers <maarten(a)mdammers.nl> wrote: If there is a way to narrow down the search within a metacategory using a dropdown menu, it would make it much easier to find categories for the image. Taking this further if a new category is made the drop down menu could suggest a possible metacategory for the new category, to reduce the amount of uncategorized categories. Instead of warning the user after uploading the image, the user could be prompted by the upload wizard to remind them to do so. -- Kevin Morgan PGP Public Key ID 0xB6028066 Key fingerprint = 09FB 59EB D9FE 7C9C 12DF  9530 A877 FAB7 B602 8066

Have you ever taken the possibility into consideration, that Billy does not want the 'praise' and 'recognition'? Maybe he is just happy with the fact that his pictures are being used. This is all just speculation. And a single person is anecdotal evidence at best. I do not quite understand the fuss about "Billy Hathorn"

On 23 February 2011 17:40, Paul Houle <paul(a)ontology2.com> wrote: Problem is that this is in practice a far better fit for wikipedia where such lists are generated in passing than commons. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_World_in_100_Objects#Objects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/BM/Photos_requested#A_History_o… -- geni

On 2/23/2011 6:29 PM, Daniel Schwen wrote: You've got a good point. Some people might not be motivated by recognition, and some might have a strong desire for privacy and would be repelled by recognition. On the other hand, I think that the large majority of people do like getting recognition and get unhappy if they aren't getting recognition for what they do (in work, family life, etc.) Now, it could be that commons, by offering little recognition, has selected for a special population of people who don't want recognition, but I think you'll attract more new people if people get recognition. "Billy Hathorn" isn't remarkable because he's got an empty User page -- an overwhelming majority of commons users have empty User pages. He's remarkable because he's taken a lot of pictures. I found him by looking at a list of top contributors in my database; after I skipped over the top few users (that I knew were bots) he was the second person I looked at. I'd have no trouble finding 50 more people who've made major contributions and have no talk page. Note that any privacy that Billy gets from not having a descriptive User page is weak privacy. If he keeps the clock in his camera accurate, I can use my database to put together a remarkably detailed description of places he's been and when he was there. The average cyberstalker might have a hard time putting his story together, but an intelligence agency or industrial espionage outfit would have no problem. [If he's putting bad timestamps on his pictures, he's harming the veridicality of both Wikipedia and Commons] Even if Wikimedia Commons doesn't put together a useful 'summary' page for users, there's no reason why a third party can't use a fully automated process to make a 'photostream' page for Billy much like the photostream page on flickr -- and I'm certain that this is going to happen. ;-) Better information about users would have many social benefits. For instance, if Billy was a bit more visible and recognized, his friends might decide to chip in a little money here and there and help him get a better camera. If he was connected to a community of photographers, he might find that he can improve his pictures greatly by buying $15 worth of supplies and learning to think a little more about light. Just the other day I got an email from a woman who wanted to use this image http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abolqassem-Aref-Ghazvini.jpg in a book. She was concerned with the validity of the public domain declaration of the image. Well, the best I can do is play jailhouse lawyer, look at the evidence, and put together an argument that the image is in the public domain. If we go back to the uploader, we see that he's got a User page but he's basically a cipher, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BehnamFarid looking at what I can see there, plus what's in my database, I believe he's an Iranian who takes pride in his heritage -- but I don't know if he lives in Iran. It's plausible that he scanned this image out of a book or other document, but I really don't know. Somebody who wanted to put together the story of this image would need to contact him, but looking at the talk page I see "*I do /not/ visit Wikipedia very often so that there may be a considerable lapse of time before I respond to your message or messages placed on this page". * Now, quite likely, Behnam Farid is as excited to answer this sort of question as I am (that his, he's not) but when users can't get answers to questions about the provenance of images, that degrades the value of PD declarations and CC license grants. And note that CC doesn't just protect the rights of content creators, it protects the rights of content consumers by maintaining information about provenance... For instance, if an image is photoshopped or staged, provenance information makes it possible for us to hold the manipulator responsible. On the other hand, Behnam Farid might live in Iran, which has a repressive government which might give him trouble if they don't like the information he's posting to Wikipedia. He might have a really good reason to keep his head low. As you see, like anything having to do with online identity, there are a lot of tradeoffs here and no one simple answer.

On 2/23/11 6:20 PM, geni wrote: To take an example from my activity, much of my plant photography is motivated by checking off a published list of the thousand-odd taxa recorded in the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas. I've been doing penciled annotation of the physical list, partly because I don't want to have to fight over having a WP or commons version of the list. It would be very convenient to have it in commons to track what pics we are still looking for, and be able to point my fellow Vegas plant people at it, but I just know that there would be a nonstop parade of busybodies arguing that the list (full of redlinks ZOMG!) is inappropriate for commons. There are all kinds of possible experiments, but we need to get back to a spirit of being willing to try stuff, and not forbidding everything that doesn't adhere to a narrow view of what commons is good for. Stan

On 2/24/2011 10:07 AM, Stan Shebs wrote: Actually, the real problem is that presumably the list is not freely licensed. Even though your annotation of it makes a pretty good case for transformative fair use, that doesn't help you with Commons policy. Maybe there's too strong of an expectation that Commons is only for finished products and not intended to be a workspace, notwithstanding that it is still a wiki. --Michael Snow

On 24 February 2011 15:22, Paul Houle <paul(a)ontology2.com> wrote: The problem with at is you are back to single custom lists and a lack of interaction. If you want people to work on becoming better photographers you multiple people focusing on one list. The thing that made the A History of the World in 100 Objects list interesting was not only were there multiple people looking to complete it but that were pics on it that could be improved (Maya maize god statue still could be although it's a tricky one). -- geni

On 2/27/11 10:56 AM, Lars Aronsson wrote: Well, this shouldn't be controversial at all! Maybe a German wrote this originally, but the rest of us have had ample opportunity to amend this. It's not German software; it's not American software, it's OUR software. Rather than blame those who tried to fix a problem, let's put our minds to work on coming up with an even better solution. Without dragging putative national characteristics into this, let's just agree that our software could be nicer. The tone of its messages could be improved, but more importantly, we need to reduce the need for there to even be nagging messages. -- Neil Kandalgaonkar ( <neilk(a)wikimedia.org>

On 02/27/2011 08:05 PM, Neil Kandalgaonkar wrote: Magnus Manske wrote MediaWiki, Commons was suggested by Erik Möller, and the Toolserver is German. The Germans have contributed more than most to the Wikimedia projects, especially in software and technology. Not to mention the huge archive photo donations and Wikipedia Academy, pioneered by the German chapter. However, the German Wikipedia has a different set of standards, more strict rules for inclusion and notability, and more speedy deletions. This adds to the "focus on content, rather than people", and when this is described as a problem on Commons, what I can see is that users from Germany are the root of the problem. Spanish or Norwegian admins on Commons are not the problem, as far as I can see, despite using the same software. So I don't think the software is the problem. We do have admins who patrol uploaded images for copyright violations and lack of categories. Fine. But perhaps we also need to patrol against unfriendly greeting messages, and correct those admins who write them. It seems I was the first to point out on User_talk:Ies that the unfriendly tone was inappropriate. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

Hi Ryan, Op 22-2-2011 21:06, Ryan Kaldari schreef: Yes. People tend not the notice things left on file pages. This way they do notice. Aggressive? What's aggressive? The fact that a user is kindly invited to help out or the message itself? A user is asked to help out because we're always low on people helping out. The message is at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Please_link_images . If you don't like it, be bold and make it a better message. My categorization project started somewhere in 2008. I was tired on stumbling upon uncategorized files. A lot of great photo's, but impossible to find. So first I wrote something to find all uncategorized files and tag them. Next step was to try to find categories for these images. At some point I started notifying people to try to get them involved. I don't know if it helped, what I do know is that the number of uncategorized files is pretty stable around (100K) and that my bot helped categorize over 200K files (probably even more). The full statistics are at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Multichill/Categorization_stats The exact workings of the bot and frequently asked questions about the bot are at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:CategorizationBot . I try to update this page based on the questions I get. Might be worth reading. I don't consider it very friendly to dismiss my work as aggresive ;-) Maarten