User talk:Huntster/Archive 28

Archive 25

Archive 26

Archive 27

Archive 28

Archive 29

Archive 30

→

Archive 35

Fair use of a short video segment?

Hey Huntster. I have three questions for you.

1) Is it possible, under fair use rules of any kind/circumstance, to use a short segment of a news-media-released video file on Wikipedia? I'm thinking something like a short repeating/looping GIF of a few seconds of a longer video that has been publicly-released by a company (or person) to the news media. Might that use fit under fair use as you understand the policies and practices of Wikipedia? I have a specific idea in mind, but I'm really interested in the general question, and not just the answer on the specific instance I'll set out next.

2) Okay, now on to the specific idea. As you already know, a number of SpaceX-related articles where Grasshopper is involved need a good photo of the vehicle flying, as you and I have previously discussed. More importantly right now, since I'm endeavoring to get the SpaceX reusable launch system development program improved to the level of a good article, that article needs a pic of Grasshopper flying. (In fact, the GA reviewer suggested it in their review. Yes, I know it is not essential to a GA review; so we can argue back. And to date, the reviewer has not insisted on it. ...)

Given the sixty-year history of "rockets only go upward" (when under rocket power) in our collective frame of reference, any photo of a rocket in flight will, quite naturally, convey upward flight to most viewers since that is about the only frame 99.999% of all readers of our encyclopedia have in their minds. Thus, for an article that is explicitly about the reusable aspect of such rocket technology, it is the landing of the reusable rocket that is new/different and, more importantly, the main thing we (as article writers) might want to convey to those who read the encyclopedia. This leads to my idea:

Might we excerpt a very short few seconds of the terminal part of one of the Grasshopper landings on one of the test flights to date, and put an appropriately-repeating edited short-loop of that landing as a video file to illustrate the SpaceX reusable launch system development program article? (Put aside for a moment whether the video loop would be the default view, which I've seen in some articles somewhere, or whether WP:MOS or WP:GA might not like that, and it would have to be "moving pictures" only upon clicking. We can discuss that aspect later.) So the vids have been released by a US company (SpaceX), and have been embedded in myriad newspaper and other online media articles to date (so the company is not trying to protect the copyright in any particularly strong way). Could we then utilize a fair use rationale to show, say, 5 seconds of a video, and do so under the legitimate fair use rationale US copyright law gives us? It seems to me that that is exactly what the fair use rationale in US copyright law was created for.

3) If you view on this is "no," do you think that your view would also be the consensus of all of the Wiki-photo knowledgeable editors?... the one's who are pretty familiar with fair use rationales for the use of photos and videos? I recognize that on many issues of policy, interpretation is required, and oftentimes people have variously conservative or liberal views on such matters. Might you be willing to "go with me" to some appropriate on-wiki forum where such things are discussed and see if I might build a consensus for such use?

Thanks for thinking with me on this one. N2e (talk) 01:18, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

N2e: The thing about fair use is that, yes, technically U.S. copyright law allows the use of brief copyrighted material even without permission from the copyright holder. That is the real world implementation. Wikimedia, however, demands a much more restrictive implementation given that one of our missions is the promotion of freely licensed media. So, when is fair use appropriate and when is it not? The guiding principle is that if the subject matter exists at the present moment, it is assumed that someone, somewhere could obtain a free photograph (which, for example, means that any image of a living person is exempt from fair use, which really irritates new users who want to replace any given infobox image with something more profession and attractive). So, to your specific question.

Acknowledge. I see that distinction; you're saying WP standards are higher than US law.

Let me start out by answering your last question first. I am personally much more restrictive in my views on fair use than some others. My view is that fair use should only be used when it is absolute positively humanly impossible for a free image to be obtained, such as with the Bigelow Aerospace station articles (Genesis I, Genesis II, Galaxy (spacecraft), etc). Other editors, however, might say "sure, it is not reasonably possible for someone to go to this private SpaceX facility to obtain footage".

Thanks for that honest opinion. I may eventually pursue dialogue with some others.

Grasshopper is in a bit of a strange situation right now...the first Grasshopper has been retired, but I don't know if the vehicle still exists (I imagine it does), and whether or not Grasshopper II will look similar. Even if it does, its flight profile will probably be similar, so its still possible that, when it begins flight testing, someone could obtain footage of it.

Grasshopper v1.0 is over, but still "standing" on a small concrete pad (not the one it launched from 8 times in 2012-2013) at the McGregor, TX, facility. Grasshopper v1.1 is quite different, about 30-40% taller, and with the flight-quality retractable landing gear bolted on on. This article has photos of the new/larger Grasshopper, taken in Texas by some guy who rides his motorcycle up there and shoots them (all his pics, to my knowledge, have the thing on the ground). He's the guy who also caught a pic of both Grasshoppers (the older/shorter one, and the newer/taller one) from an aircraft I believe, that prove GH v10.is still on premises. The ones with both rocket bodies in it are not great resolution; so I doubt they'd be good enough for WP. However, who knows, he might be willing to license one or two of his other images for use on Wikipedia. But of course, neither GH is flying in those pics.

Probably the best place to go would be Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, and ask the guys there whether it would be acceptable. I admit it has slipped my mind to contact SpaceX PR to try to get some material released (real life has been a bear). If, at some point, you could put together a list of specific files you'd like to see made available, it would give me a starting point when I ask them. Keep it simple and limited...a single illustrative video and/or photograph of Grasshopper, something related to F9R, etc...they might agree as they have in the past. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:33, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

If you're going to ping SpaceX, I'd like to get a good view of Grasshopper v1.0 in-flight-but-landing (screen grab from one of their several excellent vidoes would be fine); any view at all of Grasshopper v1.1 (or F9R-Dev1, or whatever SpaceX might be formally calling that second prototype flight test vehicle--the Brits and Australians on NASA SpaceFlight.com seem to think SpaceX has switched their name for it; but reliable sources seem to have it by multiple names); a good/better view of their F9/FH launch pad at Vandenberg; anything at all that would be photo or image to represent the software side of their development world and spacecraft embedded software technology, as this complex development effort and complex technology seems to get missed in all the hardware centric views we get in photos (this might be, for example, a photo of a lab testing their tri-computer byzantine fault-tolerant controllers that make up the guts of each of the many controllers on every Falcon rocket and every Dragon (I believe their are ten of these tri-computer/six-processor controllers just for the ten engines in an F9, plus one additional (at least) on each stage, plus a bunch of them in the Dragon -- and everyone of them is this tri-computer set that is running fault-tolerant real time computing—or a photo of one of the controller boxes with or without the cover on (to protect their proprietary technology); anything AT ALL on the Raptor engines (but I'm not holding my breath, as on this they've not even released anything to the news media). That's the five I can think of right off the top of my head. Skip the Raptor request if you think that is too many. Cheers. N2e (talk) 06:29, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Dates

It's strange that I'd never known that before. I guess because I don't see that type of date format very much. I'm just so used to the year ranges that I just figured it was the same. But, it really would help if you'd use wikilinks in your edit summaries -- especially the previous one. I never knew what ISO was. Thanks. --Musdan77 (talk) 19:39, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Musdan77, good point, I'll try to remember to do so in the future. And yes, I really don't like seeing ISO dates in articles, but sometimes they are the best option, especially given limited space. At the very least ISO is a logical format, unlike any number of online news sites, etc, that persist in using abominations like 04-05-10 or 06-12-07 (they seriously do...; can you tell what the day, month or year is??). Cheers! — Huntster (t @ c) 20:00, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Infobox television episode

There are some issues with proposed parameters for {{Infobox television episode}}. I've left a message at WT:TV about this but unfortunately the templates used in the TV project draw little interest, even though they often cause us grief. Because of this I'm approaching experienced editors directly, with a view to getting some more input. The discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television#Infobox television episode provides an introduction to the issues. Your attention would be greatly appreciated. --AussieLegend (✉) 02:20, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Invited review; Falcon rocket family graphic

Hi Huntster. User:Craigboy helpfully created a new version of his widely-used graphic of the four rockets in the Falcon family. The old one had an incorrect rendering of the Falcon Heavy (showing the side cores the identical height as the central booster core). Since SpaceX later released data showing that was not the case, I had a request in for some time asking Craigboy to update his drawing, if he could. That's on the Wikimedia Talk page for his old graphic. His new version also shows some rockets with and without the fairing, and with and without landing legs.

At any rate, I replaced the old/incorrect image on six or eight pages in the English Wikipedia yesterday. Thus, four questions for you:

1. would you be willing to review the sizing and placement of those? In each case, I left them where they were before, but I could not get the "180px" or "300px" or "450px" parm to work for me. Every time I tried to use it, the text of the caption went missing. So I eventually gave up, and just left them all as "thumb" so the text would show. For example, on the Falcon rocket family article, it would probably be better to be a larger graphic, like it used to be. Etc. You can probably just find the links for them from my contribs page.
2. I'm not really a graphic editing expert, as you know. Since the only graphic available to me on Wikimedia that has the correct rocket proportions is the single option Craigboy made, with a bunch of the various versions and models of each version, it could be the case that some different graphics showing a smaller subset of the Falcon rockets, with out showing all of the rockets, might be in order for some articles. E.g., maybe in the F9v1.0 article we might show only the F9v1.0 models, while in the F9 article we should probably show both the F1 predecessor and both versions of the F9v1.0 and F9v1.1. Etc. In any event, I mentioned that to Craigboy in a post today, but he's been kind of busy, so don't know if he will choose to make those. This might, or might not, be something that interests you; so I just mention it for that reason.
3. This is just an opinion question. I'm thinking (now) that "versions and models of each version" might be the best wording. I believe I used exactly the opposite of that wording in my various captions and edit comments left today. I believe I generally said "models and versions of each model". What do you think? Seems that since SpaceX calls the v1.0 "version 1.0" maybe my new thinking is better than my old. Would very much appreciate your thoughts on this, and maybe I'll go through them and fix them.
4. I've never done much on any of the other language Wikipedias. Is it considered courteous to notify folks who use the old/incorrect version that a new version(s) is available? Or just let them figure it out by a bottom-up emergent process?

Cheers. N2e (talk) 01:49, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Huntster. Would you be willing to look at a problem I'm having with the Falcon rocket family graphic on SpaceX reusable launch system development program. The GA reviewer has asked for the graphic to be larger than "thumb" -- but anytime I replace it with, say, "250px", the caption disappears. I agree that the graphic should be larger; just can't seem to get the File wikicode to cooperate. N2e (talk) 04:40, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

N2e, regarding the last post (I'll work on the others next), I'm not sure what you're speaking of. I've looked as all the articles it is used in, and both image and caption look fine to me. If you're still seeing a problem, mind taking a screenshot and uploading to imgur or something? Sorry for not responding before now, I've been preoccupied. — Huntster (t @ c) 15:45, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, on this one, it got resolved. After I fixed every other item on the punch list, but had trouble getting the graphic larger per the GA reviewers request (and then asked for your help), the GA reviewer fixed it theirself. Somehow, "...|thumb..." replaced with "...|300px..." wasn't working for me, and dropped the caption. But it looks like the GA reviewer changed it to "...|thumb|400px..." (leaving both parms), and it's working. I figure it is some kind of esoteric syntax thing. N2e (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

N2e: Actually, it is the thumb parameter which allows the caption. See Wikipedia:Extended image syntax for details on the various image parameters. Basically, if you're including an image in an article, always always always use the "thumb" paramter. Pretty much everything else is optional. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:22, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, for the other stuff.

1) is now resolved I think.

Maybe. The idea was that this new image is wider, and looks (perhaps) a bit bad forced into the same size as the old (fewer rockets) graphic. The old one had something like four, and the new one has eight rockets and 12 rocket cores. So I was just suggesting that someone besides me take a look at the aesthetics of the thing on each of the half-dozen or so pages I added that new image to. You might still want to take a look. But if not, no worries. N2e (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Certainly I'll double check each page. I just wish he'd made the lines a little thicker, so that the thumbs were easier to see. But oh well. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:22, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

2) I admit SVGs are not my thing, since they are code rather than pixels. However, it shouldn't be too difficult to cut selected material from this graphic to create new images. Just let me know exactly what configurations you're looking for and I'll see what I can do.

Okay, ball in my court. With your permission, I will move this entire conversation on that new image over to the image talk page on Wikimedia, to both leave a history and to allow other interested editors to weigh in if interested. N2e (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

You definitely don't need my permission! I can manually do SVG stuff and play around in Inkscape, I'm just not great at it. If you can put together a list of the modifications you'd like, I'll try to do so. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:22, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

3) I actually think "models and versions" would be best, since each rocket iteration is a model (F1, F9, F-H), and there are versions (1.0, 1.1, etc) of each model. But, that's just an opinion and I would defer to your judgment on this.

Thanks for the second opinion. I will take your input and will go through the captions I left and reconsider, with your thoughts in my mind as well. N2e (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

4) I'm sure it would be appreciated to let others know that a new version is available, but because of language barriers this is virtually never done. And, since captions may specifically reference the layout of the image, we can't simply replace instances of the old version with the new one. Ultimately, we just have to hope that someone at the different languages notices there's a new image.

— Huntster (t @ c) 16:12, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Good to know how that normally works in Wikimedia/Wikipedia image culture. N2e (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not ideal, but I don't trust computer translations to try and get my point across. Also difficult considering the large number of languages that use the image. And I only know English, lol. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:22, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

I've moved the conversation on making some additional variations of the SVG for WP pages that might benefit from not having all 8 rockets over to Wikimedia, as we discussed. I'll get back there with an answer for you in the next week or so. Thanks. N2e (talk) 12:54, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Teamwork Barnstar

SpaceX reusable launch system development program has been assessed as a Wikipedia Good Article. Thanks very much for your work on the article, and especially for your assistance with Wikipedia image questions and your involvement in the various Talk page discussions that preceded the the B-level assessment late last year, an important step to improving the article along the path to GA. Cheers. N2e (talk) 02:31, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Image OK?

If possible - maybe check to see if the (National Science Foundation?) image File:NSF-DarkSectorLab-BICEP2-20140317.jpg (presently in the BICEP and Keck Array article) is *entirely* ok to use - or not - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 13:46, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Drbogdan: To be honest, I'm not sure. While it is possible that Richter could be considered an NSF employee while down at the Pole, I think it is far more likely that he is considered a contract worker from Harvard and the images would not be included in the contract. I would suggest contacting Mr. Richter or someone within the BICEP program to try and determine the copyright protection status of those images. It's entirely possible he may release the image under a free license, or the program might have some they could release to us (let me know, as they'll have to go through WP:OTRS). — Huntster (t @ c) 23:00, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

@Huntster - Thank you for your comments - and suggestion - an email to try to clarify the copyright status of pictures by Steffen Richter was just sent [to Steffen(at)VagabondPix(dot)com] - guess we'll just have to wait and see for now - thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 03:19, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Drbogdan: regarding your email, give me a day. Go ahead an upload that image and I'll sort out the OTRS stuff with the photographer, since he did not specify which CC license he wanted to use. — Huntster (t @ c) 02:37, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

 Done - @Huntster - Thank you for your comments - ok - the image provided by Steffen Richter to me on March 22, 2014 (via email/file-attach) has now been uploaded and can be accessed at the following for adjustments and all => File:DSL BICEP Steffen Richter.jpg - hope it's *entirely* ok - please let me know if otherwise of course - Thanks again for your help with this - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 13:34, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for your help with SweetBabyGirl06! --GentlemanGhost (converse) 21:31, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

GentlemanGhost: Interesting, I was not aware of this. At least I'll know what to look for in the future. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:10, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Technically, you blocked StarlightRose, not SweetBabyGirl06, but it seems clear that one was a sock for the other. We probably haven't seen the last of it, but the more bogus info we can keep out of the BLPs, the better. Thanks again! --GentlemanGhost (converse) 00:10, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I just wasn't aware that this was a sock of someone. I don't keep track of SPIs. Their behaviour was certainly bizarre. — Huntster (t @ c) 00:23, 26 March 2014 (UTC)