Dear Isaac,

First, I would kindly ask that you stop mingling my name, unless you want me to do the same with yours.

Second, I regret, but I don't see much logic in what you are saying. If you need the OTRS permission, you should have asked for it in the first turn. But you did not ask for it. You just asked the user to confirm that the name in EXIF is her real name, and she confirmed. Why was a deletion request necessary? It acted simply as the knife at the throat and it was an intimidation (which, by the way, the uploader felt indeed - she was quite frustrated when she wrote me about this whole situation).

Third, I hope you realized that there are people who take care of the Russian WLM photos and that next time when you stumble upon such a photo, you will ask me or Yaroslav before taking any serious action. This should help us to avoid any further misunderstanding.

Sincerely,
Alexander

On 18.09.2016 00:52, olatunde olalekan isaac wrote:
Hey Alexander

TL:DR. Please, bare in mind that Common community have policies regarding copyright which they will never ignore for a contest like this. Thus, you need not lose your cool and make personal remarks in accusing reviewers  of intimidating WLM participants. Such assertion is untrue because we are in this together. We should not pretend that what we are experiencing now is expected. I agree with Lodewijk that  Wikimedia Commons community is not always easy or fun to work with but we just have to deal with it. There are thousands of files waiting for review and there are few regular users patrolling new files or reviewing them. If a reviewer nominate a file for deletion in a way you consider inappropriate, try to discuss with the user. The reviewer could be under stress as at the time they were reviewing the files. BTW, it's a red flag when username don't seem to match with copyright information on metadata, thus reviewer may decide to nominate such files for deletion per our precautionary principle. This is not uncommon and such actions are usually not considered destructive or attacks on participant. Alexander, your username is "User:Atsrlin" and if on your camera metadata, the author is "Merlin" for example, reviewer may not assume that your real name is Merlin unless you already state it on your user page or elsewhere because Atsrlin could mean something totally different in your country and may be unconnected with Merlin. In reality, you're Alexander  and Merlin is a different person who may probably come around to raise concerns about infringement of their copyright in the future.

Here is another participant, User:James John Borg. Looking at the metadata of their uploads, it shows that the copyright holder of the files is " Joshua Schembri". Should a reviewer simply assume that "James John Borg" is the same person as "Joshua Schembri"? In most cases uploaders are not always sincere when it comes to copyright issues if you merely ask them.  This is why we usually advice them to send evidence to our support team (COM:OTRS) after taking the files to DR. 

However, I'm a bit reluctant to nominate User:James John Borg's files for deletion but I don't have enough time to investigate it now, maybe someone familiar with the user can take it up.

Best,

Isaac (User:Wikicology)

On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org> wrote:
Hey Alexander,

Assuming good faith is always good - even if you have to work harder for it. It makes the interactions more pleasant and the work more fun. So I will always recommend to keep doing it - even if it goes against your natural response. 

The case where the names don't seem to match seems like a valid case to me to ask questions, and this process is (unfortunately) the process being used for that at Wikimedia Commons. It is uncomfortable, but it is what we have to deal with. Because there are so many pictures, there is a bunch to be expected. 

I'm not going to pretend that the Wikimedia Commons community is always easy or fun to work with - but their intentions are usually good. They are very tough on copyright, and very suspicious. While these are some disadvantages, it does allow us to use a lot of shared infrastructure, and makes competitions like this one possible on an international scale. Please do realise that the number of uploads typically raises with 30-100% during Wiki Loves Monuments, and this puts some stress/strain on the reviewers too. 

Best,
Lodewijk

2016-09-17 8:58 GMT+02:00 Alexander Tsirlin <altsirlin@gmail.com>:
Rather than complaining to the process could you please for once think that this is your project too and everyone in this together?
 It is not my project. Like many other people, I am forced to use it as a common image repository, even though I emphatically do not want to. As you probably know, before migrating to WMF servers Wikivoyage had its own image repository, and we wanted to keep it, because it was much better organized than Commons, and we did not want other people to impose their rules and practices of "nominating everything for deletion" on images that we have carefully collected ourselves.

Unfortunately, our request was ignored by the WMF, so yes, we are also in this strange thing that was supposed to be a common project, but is in fact run by a handful of people who believe that unjustified and well-hidden deletion requests are the best way to solve all problems. But it stinks, and we try to be as far from it as possible.

Your experience of license review for WLM Bangladesh might be interesting if we would ever have time to do this. At the moment, I spend most of my free time on finding and fighting these well-hidden deletion requests. Thank you, my dear Commons community, for creating such a wonderful working environment.

Sincerely,
Alexander



On 17.09.2016 11:32, Nahid Sultan wrote:

Though it seems a bit odd but on a commons perspective it is also a normal procedure. Commons has a huge issue with people finding images online and then uploading them as their own work, so regular contributors on commons can sometimes be overzealous in making sure that people actually have the right to release what they are releasing. That is where the OTRS system comes in. Rather than complaining to the process could you please for once think that this is your project too and everyone in this together?


We, from WLM Bangladesh team have created a work-board/list for such users who have problem with metadata, previously published same image on other media to make sure that they are actually own the copyright. we even created a hand book for reviewers explaining what to look during the review (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM). So, every reviewer check for those mistakes when reviewing an image then if they found such problematic user they immediately contact them via email or talk page and list them on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM/possible_copyright_problem.  It works for us.


Best,



From: WikiLovesMonuments <wikilovesmonuments-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of Alexander Tsirlin <altsirlin@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 11:09 AM
To: Wiki Loves Monuments Photograph Competition
Subject: Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] WLM photos are deleted on Commons
 
Now it is not only about Freedom of Panorama and non-free images.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_VekaSpb
Here, one Commons user nominates a bunch of excellent photos for
deletion after he sees that the user name does not match the name in
EXIF, even though the connection between the two is pretty obvious. This
deletion request has been closed yesterday, but it still costed me a lot
of time and a long e-mail exchange with the uploader, where I tried to
convince her that everything is fine, and this deletion request was only
a mistake. Yes, just a small mistake, really...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_PhotoJinn
Here, the same user nominates for deletion some photos of a 13th century
cathedral claiming that there is no freedom of panorama. What???!

---------------------------------------

That's a very systematic course of action against us taking place on
Commons. It would be silly to assume good faith here.

Best,
Alexander



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