"Commons configuration of Upload Wizard does not belong here" was the
premise under which a patch by a Wikimedia Commons contributor has been
recently rejected in the Upload Wizard repository. There was neither an
explanation of where to put the patch instead, nor anything helpful
about how to achieve it. And it turned out that it's non-trivial.
Okay, so I thought I give the contributor a helping hand and propose
alternative patches. While doing so, I discovered that re-configuring
Upload Wizard in *Settings.php is overly difficult when it comes to
licensing options: While it is possible adding licenses (having a
license label and a template grouped by a key) one has to repeat all the
license groups (this is how the previously defined licenses are grouped)
for example for third party licenses for having just one augmentation.
It has been suggested creating an Extension for licensing options; this
would most likely solve the issue with translation of these options but
it won't solve anything regarding grouping of these licenses. This needs
to be fixed in Upload Wizard. So what could we do about it?
Have the entire license grouping configuration
* … in *Settings.php
* … on-wiki in a page in the MediaWiki namespace
* … on-wiki in a page in the Campaign namespace (i.e. having a "default
campaign")
The 2 latter options would be, from the administrative perspective,
similar to [[MediaWiki:Licenses]], where licenses are listed for
[[Special:Upload]].
I don't know why Upload Wizard decided to store these options in its own
extension repository directory in the first place. Was it a lack of
consideration or time, laziness or intentionally? All I know is that
certain people never appear to get tired emphasizing that MediaWiki -
and Upload Wizard included - is not the right place for Wiki
configuration and when it appears to hurt their feelings when I claim
WMF wikis would be MediaWiki's "primary customer". Come, wake up and
whip your fancy ideology. WMF wikis were used as the base for most
software development in regard to MediaWiki -- and they are used for
alpha-testing. We currently can't neglect that, although, I wouldn't
mind if we try hard to change that.
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Why did Commons want to amend the licensing options at all?
Upload Wizard offers an option "free in the U.S. because published
before 1923" -- while a work is free in the U.S., it doesn't necessarily
have to be in "foreign countries", where we usually find a protection
duration of author's live time +70 years. And Wikimedia Commons has
decided to respect the copyright situation of a work in the U.S. and the
country of origin.
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-- Rillke
Wikimedia Commons administrator
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* Local|Common
