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seeking image-savvy admins to help at WP:PUI

WP:PUI is hugely backlogged, all the way back to July. A lot of the photos are in limbo due to uncertainty about their copyright status because no one knows the relevant law. (For example, can a photo of the Cinderella castle in Disneyland be released under a free license, or is it a derivative work? There are also a fair amount of unanswered questions about international copyrights.) If any editors want to go through the old pages (linked under the "log pages" section) and put in their two cents, that would be great... and it would be even better if other admins could help with the deleting. Thanks! Calliopejen1 20:54, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Deleting? Where needed, of course... Sometimes a good fair-use rationale can be added instead. Also, backlogs can be measured in terms of time, but another metric is how many requests are outstanding. ie. How many queried images are unresolved? Is there an easy way to count them? Carcharoth 21:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Basically, who cares? If there are images still unprocessed from July, it is a backlog. I will start helping more out there, I did it for a long time but got fed up with the "you bastard, why did you delete my image" questions. Not that working on Wikipedia:Copyright problems solved that problem. :). Which, incidentally, also has quite a backlog. Garion96 (talk) 01:16, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
If indeed they are tagged with a dubious tag for more than a month, delete it. People had enough free time to solve any issues, and we can always undelete if suddenly someone wants to fix that. Why don't you just go through the thousands of images fixing the tags or adding them when they lack rationale, Carcharoth? It is always easy to say "Fix that, don't delete" when you don't help there. -- ReyBrujo 01:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The notion that these images should be automatically deleted is far too presumptive, IMO, to allow sustainable maintenance of reasonable good-faith interrelationships among users across the wiki. One of the things that is conspicuously lacking here is proper notice. Take a look, for example, at Image:Bristol_Buckingham.jpg, uploaded three years ago with a statement of source and a reasonable justification for why it's in the public domain. Now look at the article in which it's been used for quite some time, Bristol_Buckingham. Now look at Talk:Bristol_Buckingham. Where's the notice that the hawks are circling around this prey? There is a notice on the uploader's talk page, but that uploader hasn't been involved in the article on Bristol_Buckingham for over three years, and has moved on to other things, presumably thinking that the article on Bristol Buckingham is taken care of and it's time to move onto other things. Fortunately, the uploader is still regularly active three years after the upload. But what about the widespread cases where the uploader is either no longer involved or doesn't check in regularly? And, I should add, that there have been a number of contributors to this article on Bristol Buckinham as seen in the revision history, but no apparent need for use of the talk page to get the article to its present state. This is just a sample of the reasons that the attitude or assumption "they had all the chances in the world to fix it" does not accurately represent the situations that occur across the wiki, and is not, under the present methods, sustainable policy-- not, at least, without making further messes of mutual good will built in the last several years across the wiki. Just figured I should mention some of these things.. ... Kenosis 04:48, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand the issues, yes. But let's face the ultimate truth: the PUI page should not only be reviewed by administrators ready to delete, but also users willing to spend time trying to fix the images. Unfortunately, there are few willing to delete, and even less ones willing to fix them. As I said, everyone jumps whenever an image is deleted, but few (if any) are willing to spend their time fixing them. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the admin could take his time to fix it? Yes. Must he do it? No. I have deleted hundreds of copyright violations, but whenever I found one that could be saved, I did so. I spent a lot of time purging copyvios from article histories, and recreating articles without them. I did my part to fix what I could. Let's face another ultimate truth: we do in Wikipedia what we like. I don't patrol new articles, but I upload free media. I don't like witch hunting vandals, but I delete copyvios. I don't like chemistry topics, but I like fantasy ones. Until someone who likes fixing possible unfree images arrives there, the ones handling the page will lead the pack.
To put in perspective, if I go give a hand there, I will go to each image thinking about deleting them, because I don't like taking the little time I can spend at Wikipedia per day doing something I don't want. Why would I go there then? Because someone must do it and nobody cared in the last two months. Why take a "deletionist" view by default? Because the guideline allows me to. That is why I stay away from topics I don't like, because when I must do something, I cut through it without considerations. We are all very good at pointing failures and offering solutions, but not very good ones at applying them. -- ReyBrujo 06:23, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
ReyBrujo and Kenosis are both right here. What I would appreciate is a little bit of human filtering to ensure oversight of the bots. To have a small group of people browsing the categories of images about to be deleted and compiling a list of images that "could be saved". This is because people periodically wax and wane in the level of their contributions, but bots are tireless and can work much faster. As for not having the time to fix things, well I've look through the categories mentioned in the section above and picked out a few that probably don't need to be deleted. I'll list them, with comments, up there. Carcharoth 09:30, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, see Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#Examples of OK images orphaned and tagged for deletion by bots. Carcharoth 10:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Carcaroth, fairly kindly, says "ReyBrujo and Kenosis are both right here". Of course, each may well be "right" (whatever "right" is) from different perspectives. I'm mainly concerned about the difference in perspectives w.r.t. the efforts to efficiently and expediently delete images deemed offensive by some, whether because they're "non-free", or tagged as questionable in some way, or alleged to be inadequately verified as to their status (when in fact many such images are adequately verified), and a host of other complaints. These are not, IMO, proper justifications for mass deletions, nor are they proper justifications for massive manual cleanup efforts.
........ Among many other things, this is not, as ReyBrujo said, an "ultimate truth" we're dealing with here. And I sincerely hope it's not anyone's ultimate truth -- I merely take it as ReyBrujo's expression of frustration arising out of a perception of excessive accumulation and delay in achieving this aspect of previously formed set of goals. Far from being an ultimate truth or ultimate solution, this all is a work in progress where there is a very significant lag time in many different maintenance tasks, between the time when the insertion or initial formation of particular material into the wiki (in this case images and other media files), and then the time at which someone identifying the tasks perceived by the user placing the maintenance tag to be needed, and then later, perhaps much later, to the actual fulfillment of the maintenance tasks. This lengthy lag time is not limited to media files. Drive-by "unreferenced" templates and "needs more verification" tags have become increasingly common on the wiki too. People get to thinking that the whole wiki isn't adequately sourced, and go 'round placing tags. Thus the question of "who will do the actual work?" comes into play in many areas, not just w.r.t. images and not just w.r.t. deletion of material that someone has questioned by placing a maintenance tag on it. These lengthy lag times are, IMO, an inevitable part of dealing with the material in an open-source wiki such as WP.
........ But, a mass effort or automated effort to "take out the trash" that presumes the goal is "deletion", or that presumes the goal is "only free content", or other narrowly focused effort, has shown itself recently to be capable of doing more harm than good. We've seen visible evidence of this already, people leaving the wiki in disgust specifically because of the fights over these things, with many reasonable, clearly competent users making many statements to the effect that they feel either unfairly treated or caught in the middle of something irrational. We can only guess and extrapolate how much we've been unable to observe. Of course images can be replaced -- so can virtually any content presently on the wiki, in theory at least. But the procedure by which the stuff is removed is extremely important in maintaining good will among users on the wiki. If this aspect of cleanup efforts is not respectful of user contributions to existing articles, with a process that users at the local level can tend to agree essentially "well, collectively we admit we were treated fairly on that issue", the cost could forseeably greatly outweigh the benefits here -- assuming it hasn't already begun to do that.
........ As I've pointed out before, roughly nine out of ten IfDs go uncontested or only mildly contested. That appears to be fairly closely in keeping with Jimbo Wales' statement that 90% of the NFC on the wiki is unnecessary. IMO, no need to get ballistic about the remainder, at least not under the present circumstances. Presently, as I said, we need to get notice to the appropriate users that the images in articles they've worked on are in potential jeopardy, be it in 7 days, or 7 years. Adequate notice, with a reasonable time to respond after adequate notice is provided, plainly is one of the key affirmative steps that can be taken in this quarter of the wiki, a step that lends itself both towards removing images that arguably are copyright violations (up to and including free-licensed images whose origin is not reasonably well verifiable), and also lends itself towards a better sense of having been treated fairly in the process. After that's addressed and implemented, dealing with backlogs potentially becomes a more soluble discussion, IMO, where certain additional kinds of automated deletion can more reasonably come into play. . ... Kenosis 16:00, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

There are some serious process design issues with some of the image workflows. WP:PUI is one of the best examples. I think this design worked when Wikipedia was smaller and there were less images to look at. Processes that accrue work are not sustainable. If it takes someone 3 seconds to add work to your list, and it takes you 3 hours to work and remove it, it won't work. (For example see the ridiculous Category:Cleanup_by_month) When a system is set up to "ascertain the source and/or copyright status of an image" you set yourself up for failure. People will expect you to do that, but it is not maintainable. What ends up happening is that the system becomes a deletion system, which is (slightly) more maintainable, but isn't what you "promised", and people get mad (see above discussion...) Image uploaders must be responsible for accurately licensing and sourcing their images. There is no other maintainable system. - cohesion 17:28, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Within current methods, recently uploaded orphaned "non-free" images are pretty much dead meat, so there's very little backlog with those. Perhaps the biggest backlog at present is a rapidly accumulating mess of junk "free" images that presently have no encyclopedic purpose and likely will never have any encyclopedic purpose -- except that it hadn't been explicitly identified as a backlog yet. They're generally safe enough from a legal standpoint, but at some stage they'll need to be dealt with too. Moreover, well, let me put it this way -- maybe a candidate for another Raul's law would be: "As the quality of free-licensed images improves, the demand for concrete proof of ownership by the granter of the license increases at first gradually, then exponentially." Or something like that. But like I was trying to say, this all is is a work in progress. The main big deal after the Board Resolution in March, it seems to me, is to get these things categorized into category of rationale. This appears far more important than having on every image page somebody's hand-typed expression of why they think the boilerplate rationale applies. If anything is unsustainable, IMO, that practice of writing "the rationale for the rationale" by hand is unsustainable as the wiki continues to grow. This is largely because custom hand-typed rationales require specialized volunteers to go over hundreds of thousands of rationales by eye, reviewing each of them by eye from a central "Image Control Department" -- an unsustainable practice. On the other hand, if we get the categories of rationale correct, the local participants at the various articles can do a great deal of the work, and the specialists can help with increasingly knowledgeable, consistent advice (as opposed to the kinds of tug-of-war arguments that have come out of the remaining confusion about what belongs in what category). But in order to get this happening it appears we must get the licensing tags in better order, which will take time. Betacommand's assisting us in this direction at present, and I would expect this to begin to make better sense in upcoming months as we begin to be able to track usage of all the image-licensing-templates on the wiki. ... Kenosis 19:37, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I have been doing copyright searches on magazine covers and have found the many are in the public domain. Most of the pre 1964 Ziff-Davis Publishing and Gernsback Publications were not renewed and are in the public domain. If a few cases a magazine was sold; and the new copyright holder renewed some issues. Amazing Stories issues around 1955 are an example.

The March 1961 through January 1964 issues of Electronics Illustrated by Fawcett Publications were not renewed and are in the public domain. After a series of buyouts and mergers, someone forgot about renewing the out of print titles. For more details see here: Talk:Electronics_Illustrated#Copyright_renewal

I am interested in hobbyist electronics magazines such as Radio Electronics and Popular Electronics. Because the pre 1964 issues are public domain; I have been able to change about half of my Fair Use magazine covers to public domain.

When I changed the license to PD-US-not renewed I left all of the information for Fair Use in the image description. This is in case a future revision of NFCC requires a certified letter from the Register of Copyright, Marybeth Peters, attesting to the lack of a copyright renewal. These images would be easy to change back to Fair Use while waiting for the letter.

I am interested in comments about these two magazine covers. Is this sufficient proof of PD-US-not renewed? I have a few more of my images to convert plus magazine covers others have uploaded.

Image:Radio News Nov 1930.jpg in Radio News
Image:Electronics Illustrated Mar 1961.jpg in Electronics Illustrated

I have been spending way to much time following the latest Fair Use requirements and fine-tuning the image description pages. I would like to spend more time adding content and improving my articles. (My prose could use that.) I hope that my asking for comment here on NFC doesn't result in a speedy delete of all of my images because of a minor technical detail.

SWTPC6800 02:33, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd be interested in an answer to this. The TIME covers discussion just got archived, and the preliminary conclusion there was that all the covers from 1923 (when TIME was founded) to some point in 1934, are public domain by this argument. Plus various others throughout the years. The caveat being that you have to check that no-one else holds copyright and renewed it. eg. the artist who does a cover artwork, or a photographer who supplied the cover photograph. Carcharoth 09:23, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I suggest to contact the company that current owns the magazine. A copy of the letter should be sent to the Foundation for record keeping. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 09:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
If the company is already aware of this, and doesn't care too much, then it won't be a problem. What should be done though when we encounter companies that aren't aware of this (and for whom the letter will be a nasty shock) and whose employees bluster, prevaricate, and (sometimes) just plain lie? See copyright commandeering.) Sometimes with convincing legal jargon backing them up? Carcharoth 09:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


The magazine publishing world has always had a lot of buying and selling of titles. In the case of Electronics Illustrated, I doubt that anyone at Hachette Filipacchi Media knows anything about the magazine. Electronics Illustrated was absorbed into Mechanix Illustrated in November 1972. Mechanix Illustrated became Home Mechanix in 1985. After the Diamandis Communications leveraged buyout, Home Mechanix was sold to Times Mirror Magazines. Diamandis continued to renew the copyrights on Electronics Illustrated until they were acquired by Hachette. In all of the merger confusion the copyright renewal stopped. These companies are not going to do a forensic search to determine what happened. We have positive proof that the copyright renewals stopped and the issues are in public domain. SWTPC6800 14:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Electronics Illustrated did not identify the cover photographers on the early issues. They started giving credits around 1963. None of the issues that I have give a separate copyright notice for the cover photo. The Radio News cover appears to be by a staff illustrator. David Hymes did every cover for two years in the early 1930s. I do not upload covers with celebrities, the first Radio News published by Ziff-Davis (April 1938) has Lucille Ball on the cover. I would believe that one could have a photographer or studio copyright. If no notice or credit is given, we should be able to assume the cover is a work for hire. You had to actively claim a copyright before 1978. -- SWTPC6800 17:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Tracking down sources

Some more results from my brief survey of Category:Images with unknown source. Image:Stonebw01.jpg and Image:Draug.jpg have been tracked down. When it is taking too long, or the image is poor quality or not needed (others already in articles) I move on. Sometimes, though, there are annoying cases of pictures obviously scanned from a book, obviously old and PD, but not enough information to save them. One example (this one's not obviously PD) is Image:Mortimer Lewis Main Block of Asylum built 1837-8.jpg (an asylum in Gladesville, NSW, Australia). The uploader didn't give any information, and vanished after uploading. I looked up Mortimer Lewis and found a nice biography here. I was tempted to start an article at Mortimer William Lewis, but then realised that I had no way of finding out the source of that picture. :-( Carcharoth 20:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Pity we can't keep Image:Orig-86375.jpg (safe pic). Ditto for Image:Japan 27s world record sex Frame1 full.jpg (unsafe pic!) :-) Carcharoth 21:21, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
And now I've started removing "no sources" tags in cases where the tag seems counterproductive. I'm not too comfortable about this, so I'm putting forward this edit for review here, despite the image being free (or at least claimed to be free). I suppose it could be a modern pic done in a faux ancien style, but Image:Mbanza congo.JPG just looks so like hundreds of other 'old' artworks I've looked at, that I can't bear to see this one go down the plughole for lack of source information. Is there a "long-term lacking sources" category that images can be put in if they are worth saving? (I've also nudged the uploader, who is active, to provide a source). Carcharoth 21:35, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Can envelopes and other items of stationery have copyrights applied? The image in question is Image:3letter.jpg. Would copyright apply to that? It's probably old enough to be PD-US anyway, but I thought I'd check. Carcharoth 01:41, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think {{PD-ineligible}} would apply to something like that. Videmus Omnia Talk 02:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Towards keeping track of image-licensing template usage

I have begun a conversation with User:Rich Farmbrough, Misza13 and Betacommand about automating the basic type of tally that Betacommand recently compiled here. The objective is to keep a periodic automated tally of licencing template usage, particularly but not necessarily limited to NFC tags and public domain tags, in such a way that interested participants can keep tabs on template usage. Ideally, I think, something that will allow trend lines to be displayed for usage of each template will assist the project in discerning usage trends and the distribution of standard rationales across different classifications of images and other media files.

Just wanted to keep everybody here apprised that I received a response from both Rich Farmbrough and Misza13 and left a note about it on Betacommand's talk page. The beginning threads about this are at User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers (with a brief response on my talk page User talk:Kenosis#Bot requirements), (User_talk:Misza13#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers, and User_talk:Betacommand#Proposal_for_a_cooperative_effort_among_several_bot_designers.2Fcode_writers. ... Kenosis 15:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Ill set up a auto updated page for both free and non-free images daily In BCBots userspace. βcommand 15:27, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Fantastic. I look forward to seeing it, as I imagine others do as well. I imagine if it works well, it will likely be a good candidate to turn into a project page. Do you think this can be set up in the future to be put into a spreadsheet and determine usage trends? Such an ancillary function would, I think, be extremely useful for WP as well as for the Wikimedia Foundation Board's analysis in following up on their March 2007 Licensing Policy Resolution. Thanks! . ... Kenosis 19:34, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

For start, I have begun moving my tools to my toolserver repository. So far I have put the category tracker, spoiler tracker and image deletion bots. Миша13 17:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Image policies and WP:BITE

In a similar vein, I found Image:Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo.jpg and with this edit I tidied up the image page and removed a "no sources" tag. There is an interesting history there, though. Put yourself in the shoes of User:Jacopock. Look over his contributions here, and his uploads here, and settle down and read the following story.

Jacopock created his account at 18:11, 23 September 2007, and two minutes later dumped an essay on Wikipedia with this edit (18:13), and then made this experiment at adding an image (18:18). This was followed by three attempts to upload the same picture (all three were uploaded), possibly just attempting to get the upload name correct (18:22 for Image:Arcenio.jpg, 18:25 for Image:Arsenio de carpo.jpg, and 18:29 for Image:Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo.jpg). The trail then goes cold. No more contributions. Possibly the user failed to work out how to get images to display and gave up in disgust.

The next part of the story concerns User:OrphanBot, who, noticing that Jacopock had failed to give the images a license tag, comes along and tags them as needing more information (otherwise they will "be deleted within 7 days"). OrphanBot also leaves a message at User talk:Jacopock (at 19:06). In fact, OrphanBot's message is one of the better written and more polite bot messages, but still, I'm never quite sure how people react to being (effectively) greeted by a bot.

At this point (well, around 3 hours later), I enter the story. I was browsing Category:Images with unknown source as of 23 September 2007 and the faded brown paper of a scan of an old image caught my eye. I investigated and discovered an interesting article at Arsénio Pompílio Pompeu de Carpo (well, when I first saw it, it was hardly an article). After checking to see if it was a copyvio (doesn't seem to be) or if it was a hoax (again, seems to be genuine), I set about tidying up the image and article, with my first step being to add the image to the article (21:54). I then tidied up the image and removed the bot-added tag (pending more information), some 6 minutes later. I then welcomed Jacopock with a template, and followed up with a specific message asking for image and article sources.

Over the next hour or so, I tidied up the article, changing it from this to this. Mostly pretty standard wiki-linking and copyediting, with a fair bit of work still to do, though hopefully others will help. This did get me wondering though about how WP:BITEy it is for new users, struggling to upload images and get them to work, to get a bot notice on their talk page. The message might be polite and helpful, but it is hardly friendly. I realise that Jackopock might only have been interested in depositing an essay on Wikipedia, but maybe a more friendly approach could encourage more people to continue to contribute? One thing that might help is to get the image bots to put {{welcome}} on the pages of new users before adding notices about images. How easy would it be to do that?

Finally, the image would likely have been deleted after a week, when in fact it was a perfectly OK image. It was just an all too common case of a user not really understanding what to do. New users sometimes don't edit for periods of several days. Maybe a week is too short a time for new users to learn about how Wikipedia works. Surely there must be a better way to handle things than this? Carcharoth 23:52, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we should actively discourage new users from uploading images at all. The process is drastically less simple than adding text, and as you say, it frequently only leads to frustration. Let people learn Wikipedia with text first, then later when they know their way around better try images. Images will never be simple on Wikipedia even if we had great software for it, but the use of our template system coupled with a requirement for somewhat advanced copyright knowledge is a recipe for frustration. - cohesion 02:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
That does make sense. I was always more interested in text than images, and I avoided images for a long time. Partly because I didn't have anything to contribute, and partly because I realised that grabbing images "off the internet" was the wrong thing to do. What I did learn about images on Wikipedia came bit by bit. It's only recently that I've really got more deeply involved. I guess many people never do bother to learn more than the basics. On the other hand, successfully establishing an image on Wikipedia is just as satisfying as contributing to the text of articles. Another point is that people who misunderstand how they should add text probably get just as frustrated. Probably a combination of both: discourage new users from uploading, and make the process easier, is best? Carcharoth 02:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps we should focus more on encouraging new users to upload their own images, just like we encourage them to upload their own text. Sure, they can run afoul of our image policies with their own work (such as a photo of a copyrighted work), but it's comparatively much safer and easier. Aside from that, user created images are the free content we really crave. -- But|seriously|folks  02:30, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Yeah. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 02:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
In my guess / estimation, 70% of the old (8 month+) images that are deleted could have been saved if someone took the time, whereas 90% of the new images that are deleted have fundamental flaws and simply don't comply with policy no matter what you can do. Oh, and 99% of the users uploading bad images are sincerely trying to do the right thing, but simply haven't yet figured out what the policies are, how to do it, and/or the "free content" goals of Wikipedia. There's probably a "win-win" (sorry for the antiquated catch-phrase) solution out there involving making the upload forms, tutorials, tag notices, and deletion procedures warmer and fuzzier, and easier to understand. Wikidemo 03:18, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Fortunately, you have time to spare doing all this. See if you can find a bunch of people sharing that dedication (which I admire). It would be wonderful if we all could coach a single user every day until he is able to work around Wikipedia, but we all lack time. Just yesterday I spent a good 15-30 minutes with someone trying to explain him why he should not use a magazine cover at Monica Belucci when a free image was available, why his rationale of "I insist that illustrates a subject (namely Ms Bellucci's breasts)" was not a good one, that if he did not like the rule he could contact different talk pages to ask about, and why revolution, riot and civil disobedience were not to be applied in Wikipedia. After all that he was blocked for disruption. So, you have had a good experience yesterday, I had a bad one (because I was not able to make him understand about our policy), and both needed, say, 30 minutes. Now you understand why what you ask is almost impossible to achieve with lack of dedicated people, and why we cannot impose anyone to do something when, according to guidelines and policies, they are entitled to do something else (in example, correct an article when you can delete it). It is not the best option, I know. But it is the best one for the administrator who is currently checking the issue. -- ReyBrujo 16:34, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I do see your point. I wish I could help out more, as it was interesting going through those categories (or one of them at least). I steer clear of pr0n images (softcore and hardcore) because of the reaction you encountered (though someone still has do deal with it all). I did point out two pr0n images for speedy deletion though. I accept that we don't have enough people to deal with things, but can't we at least agree that bots could be programmed to be friendly, and put {{welcome}} for new users? Carcharoth 16:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Butseriouslyfolks has a very good point, allowing only free content would drastically simplify the upload experience for people. This benefit isn't touted much as a reason to switch to only free content, but maybe it should be. "Upload only images you create" is a very simple rule that almost anyone can understand. (And then of course more experienced people would know that other free content was ok as well.) Something to think about anyway. - cohesion 01:27, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, bots should add a welcome tag. I think there was a reason for not doing so (99% of the time I add the welcome tag and the test warning together, since the test template alone does not provide as much information). As for the limitation of free images, I remember discussing with people who argued "This image came from my website, so it is mine". The internet is the place where, magically, everything is free. I prefer catching them "raw" and training them a bit ;)
A friend had a forum that, instead of catchas, it showed you a phrase, and you needed to put "it", "its" and "it's" to complete the phrase to be able to register a new account. I kind of wish there were a similar way for new users here that, if they want to upload an image, they need to go through an obligatory tutorial. I mean, a stripped down version of Wikipedia:Upload, this one has so much text people is likely to just click around until getting to the upload form (Choose Your Own Adventure anyone?). -- ReyBrujo 03:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Wording of Cr. 1

These two sentences seem to say very similar things. Can they be conflated somehow?

"Where possible, non-free content is transformed into free material instead of using a fair-use defense. Non-free content is always replaced with a freer alternative if one of acceptable quality is available."

Is this "free" vs. "freer"? Why "transformed" and then "replaced"? This language should be a straighforward as possible. Tony (talk) 03:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You're a very good copy editor so I would encourage anything you care to do to improve the language while preserving the meaning. The whole criterion can be said in one sentence. #1 parses down to: Do X only if not Y. If Y, don't do X. For example ask yourself, is there Y? If so, probably not X. Better to say it once, not four times. While you're at it, the policy doesn't seem to distinguish between shades of free content despite the word "freer." Either it is free or it is not. Also, the issue of a "fair use defense" is only indirectly relevant. Wikidemo 05:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
One question before making it from 4 -> 1 ... what cases can non-free content actually be transformed into free content? --Iamunknown 06:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Maybe requesting the copyright holder to releasing it under a free license? It seems that this isn't the intent of the sentence though... Sancho 06:25, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
It mostly relates to maps and graphs I think. If you find a copyrighted graph you should not use it directly but instead find the source material used to create the graph and create your own (information is not copyrightable, just it's presentation), same for maps. If you find a map showing for example the distribution of some animal don't use it directly, but instead find a copyright free blank map (Commons have several), find the raw data (and cite it as your source) and build your own distribution map based on that. Thinks like that. --Sherool (talk) 07:18, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Don't forget that non-free content can become free when the copyright expires and the content falls into the public domain. You don't have to do anything there. Just wait and keep an eye out for changes in the law and copyright renewals (if such renewals are possible). Not an active transformation, but still a transformation. Carcharoth 09:38, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

As I was looking through Category:Images with unknown source (and I assume that this applies to Category:Images with unknown copyright status), I noticed a lot of logos up for deletion as not having a source. One example: Image:Byuhlogo.jpg ... so, it is a logo for BYU Hawaii ... I'm pretty sure the source is just going to be BYU Hawaii's website.

Lately we (including myself) have been getting stricter on lack of sources, and we now have bots that can fairly accurately detect when there is no source and tag the image as such. Problem is, logos, album covers and books don't a priori need a source written down. I've seen many editors say, "I didn't write down the source because it is obvious!11!!11 The source is the book/album/company website/company letterhead/etc." And I agree; in most cases w.r.t. logos, album covers, and book covers, it is obvious.

I guess we should decide on what the spirit of the source-requirement is ... is it that every image must have a source and, even if it could easily be saved by someone who instead automatically tags it, it should be deleted? Or is it that we need to actively prevent plagiarism, copyright violations, and also mistakes by (mostly) newbie editors, and, since it is obvious (or would be a trivial search) who holds the copyright to a logo, book cover, and album cover, a source should not be a reason to delete an image.

If the latter, I would like to change the {{no source}} and {{no copyright}} (or whatever the templates are now) accordingly...but that won't solve the problem of the bots who tag images with no source automatically. What do you all think? --Iamunknown 14:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this will need a thorough analysis. IMO, one of the questions presented in the analysis should be "Do fair-use, low-resolution images such as album and book covers commonly found on booksellers' and CD sellers' websites require an explicit statement of source?" Another question is: "Should the presently separate templates for "non-free album cover" and "non-free CD cover" be combined into one "Album/CD cover" template?" ... Kenosis 15:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
A proposal is being prepared that would recommend a change NFCC#10 to allow image description pages to name the (most likely) copyright holder instead of the source. Some sort of attribution of copyright benefits downstream image users, so removing that clause entirely from NFCC wouldn't be good. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Where is this proposal being prepared? --Iamunknown 03:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I once suggested that, in the case of covers, the source was obvious: the album, book or single the article was referring too. The discussion is buried somewhere last year. Some admins agreed, and some others did not. -- ReyBrujo 03:40, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-free images of dogs

I think the same logic can be applied animal actors as can be applied to human actors when it comes to non-free images, if not more so. We have not just one, but four non-free images on Porthos (Star Trek). Normally I'd think this is a no brainer and just remove the images, but I suspect it might be "controversial", so I'll ask here first. -- Ned Scott 06:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest to cut down the photos by half. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 07:42, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking zero. Like with real people, unless the appearance of the dog in character is significantly different than the real life dog (or any other dog, for that matter), then we shouldn't be using it. -- Ned Scott 07:44, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I really don't understand why Wikipedia has such extensive coverage of fictional characters while denying many real companies, products, and historical events as non-notable. But given that we do, I don't see how this differs than any comparable human actor. The article is about the character, not the existence of a specific dog or a breed. No, dogs are not all interchangeable. If it's okay to use a non-free human image for a human character, it's okay to use a non-free dog image for a dog character. I don't see any relevant difference. Wikidemo 12:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Actually.. we only use non-free images of characters when their appearance is significantly different than their normal appearance. Which means non-free to Worf, free to Mr. Bean. -- Ned Scott 12:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Is that why we use this picture instead of this far more illustrative one, which was apparently deleted recently? Presumably, this picture is the next to go. Porthos, or rather the four dogs who portray Porthos, do not regularly appear in the arms of Frengi Starfleet employees. This is getting silly and, I think, well outside the territory of either copyright or Wikipedia's free content mission. Grown (presumably) men and women actually discussing the merits of a photograph of a dog sniffing the prosthetic ear of a science fiction television actor. I'm not sure the article or any of the other Star Trek "fancruft" significantly increases anybody's understanding of any useful topic, but like I said, if we're going to say the subject of a sci fi character of any real or imagined species is notable, a picture of it seems appropriate. Wikidemo 15:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
The free picture of Toto seems fine to me; I don't see that the nonfree image of Dorothy and Toto does any better at showing the reader what the dog looked like, which presumably is why the image is included. An image of just the dog would do better at illustrating the dog's appearance on Porthos than the current top image, in which the dog is cut off at the bottom of the frame. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:27, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
There isn't a free picture of Toto. There is a free picture of the dog (Terry), which is fine for the article Terry (dog), but for the article Toto (dog), there should be a section on adaptations, with a picture from the film. The dog named Toto is a fictional character, and can only be illustrated by words from the book (or possibly any artwork of the dog used in the original book). Carcharoth 20:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

And there you go. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 and had illustrations. The primary illustration for Toto (dog) should be an illustration from the first edition of the book. Then an adaptations section can deal with the portrayal of the dog in different adaptations of the book, with or without images as the case may be. But honestly, if people promoting free content think that a free image of a dog born in 1933 can be used to illustrate an article about a character from a book published in 1900, then they are really missing the point. Getting the correct encyclopedic image must come before free/non-free concerns. Otherwise you just start to mislead readers. Carcharoth 20:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

That's better!  :-) Carcharoth 20:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
An image from the book would be perfectly fine as well. The image in the article is illustrating the dog from the movie, which is a very well known movie after all. So it's not a poor choice of image.
The idea that there is a difference between an image of this dog qua dog and an image of this dog qua the character in the movie is somewhat stretched. If I presented a picture of the dog with no context, I don't think anyone could say easily whether it was a image of the dog or an image of the character. For fictional characters that have no significant visual difference from the person or thing portraying them, an image of the actor is fine for representing the character. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:27, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Not really. The background of the pic is important here. Patrick Stewart in 20th century jeans with a Starbucks in the background is very different to a picture of Jean-Luc Picard, even though they superficially look the same. The context is all wrong and it is wrong to mislead the reader. I would have left the Terry (dog) image in the Toto article, in an "adaptations" section, but the article isn't big enough yet to cope with two pictures. Carcharoth 20:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Picking up on something Carl said above: "The image in the article is illustrating the dog from the movie, which is a very well known movie after all. So it's not a poor choice of image. " - surely you are joking? The correct use for such an image would be in the film. ie. in The Wizard of Oz (1939 film). It is misleading to put, up front, a picture of an actor from a film, to illustrate an article on a character from a book. Period. There are no two ways about it. Carcharoth 20:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The question of book versus film adaptation is a distraction - a failing of that article perhaps, but not really the subject we're talking about. I think the newly added picture of the dog from the book is the right picture for that particular article - even though the public distinctly associates the name Toto with the image from the film, the book is the source and so it's more encyclopedic to treat it as such. However, if the focus of the article were the portrayal of Toto from the film, The Wizard of Oz, I just don't see how an image of the wrong dog, or the dog outside the context of the film, could ever be an adequate stand-in. Might as well take a picture of a random baseball and tell people to pretend it's Barry Bond's. The visual of Judy Garland playing Dorothy, next to that dog, is beyond irreplaceable. It's probably iconic, and historical. Not as sure about Frengis and TV dogs, though that goes to the notability of the subject.Wikidemo 20:41, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't know that picture is "iconic", even if her portrayal of Dorothy is "iconic". This isn't a question of a different dog being substituted - it's the same dog here. The goal of that article is not to illustrate Dorothy, just to illustrate the dog. Once the image of Dorothy and Toto becomes free, then it would be reasonable to use that image. We have to compromise, however, when we have a free image that does illustrate the appearance of the dog. It's a question of what the encyclopedic purpose of the picture is in this article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
The article is not about the dog. The article is about a book character. The dog's article is at Terry (dog). The film's article is at The Wizard of Oz (1939 film). The character article is at Toto (dog). The free image illustrates the appearance of the actor, who played a character in a film, based on a book. The actor is three steps removed from the book character. Use a picture of the actor for the actor article, a picture of the actor in the film for the film character, and an illustration from the book (or a quoted description) for the book character. I don't know how I can put it any simpler than that. Carcharoth 20:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Toto is both a character in a book and a character in a movie. The article ought to cover both. This is no different than Harry Potter or James Bond. I would suspect that the appearance of Dorothy and Toto from the film is the what many people envision when they hear the words "Wizard of Oz". — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Of course the article should cover both. Did I ever say otherwise? What it shouldn't do is perpetuate people's impression that Toto=dog from film. Putting the film image up front would perpetuate that misunderstanding, and educating people about the original Toto is precisely what Wikipedia should be doing. Carcharoth 21:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
And guess what? The James Bond article correctly leads off with an illustration from Ian Fleming (for the comic strip), then an image of a possible inspiration for the character, and only further down the article do the movie actors even get a look in. I would hope Harry Potter does the same. When the The Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson films came out, there was a big surge of people using film screenshots to illustrate the articles. Some still remain. It was difficult to get across to people that these weren't definitive illustrations of the characters - that the book is over 50 years old, and that previous films had been done. The solution is generally to push all the "adaptation" stuff into its own section, and lead off the article with the initial chronology, the origins of the character, the first published appearance, and so on. Carcharoth 21:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I understand your concern better now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Wikidemo, I agree. Sorry for taking this off-topic. I was looking at Ned's Mr Bean example above, and the (free) picture of Rowan Atkinson on tour, pretending to be Mr Bean, still doesn't quite do the same trick as the (non-free) screenshot from the TV series further down in the article. But in that case it is so nearly good enough, that it is not worth worrying about. Getting back to Star Trek, I think the wrong images were removed from the article. The ones removed were better than the ones that were kept. Carcharoth 20:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Note that I carefully said that the "vision" of Dorothy and Toto is iconic, not any specific picture. That's a whole nother issue, as they say, and an interesting one too. I think everyone here agrees that we're handling Toto correctly, and hey, nothing wrong with a meandering discussion where most people agree in image use policy, and when they don't they're all civil. It's kind of refreshing. Wikidemo 23:32, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Toujours la politesse. Anyone think Terry may not be THE Terry? 'cos I think it's just possible (comparing this pic) that (s)he's an imposter and needs to be deleted as a non-notable dog :) --luke 04:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Give that the article Terry (dog) says that the dog was born in 1933 and died in 1944, and this photo was uploaded in October 2005 by an editor who was last active in October 2006, then, yes, this probably is suspect. At the very least, if it is the real dog, it was probably taken from a website somewhere and is not free. This is why sources are important for photos like this. Thanks for spotting that. On a more general note, this is exactly what I mean when I say that an over-emphasis on careful inspection of non-free content leads to an absence of the critical, sceptical examination that is also needed for claims of free content. This should be warning to us all. Carcharoth 10:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
IfD opened on the "Toto" image here. Carcharoth 10:31, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Notice: proposal to change NFCC#10

I am announcing a proposal to change certain aspects of WP:NFCC#10, the part of policy about image description pages. This proposal would simplify the data required on image description pages of nonfree images. It would also allow for certain common use rationales (like a book cover image on the article about the book) to be obtained from templates.

The proposal does not change any other part of the nonfree content criteria. But, as conversation on this talk page indicates, making the image description pages easier to format correctly would make it easier to bring images into compliance and make it easier to detect new images that don't provide required information.

The proposal is at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal and its talk page is Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria/Proposal. This proposal was developed by conversation among User:Anetode, User:Betacommand, User:Wikidemo and me. We hope others will look over it and discuss it on the associated talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

DVD Cover Art

I want to start a new discussion regarding DVD cover art. IMHO I think adding these to relevant articles with proper references and identification should be perfectly acceptable. It would be no different then Amazon.com or other websites using cover images. It helps articles particularly those with DVD sections and tables. I've seen them particularly helpful in seeing different the different DVD region covers. What would it take to modify WP:FU to include this?? Thanks FrankWilliams 17:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

No policy change is needed. There's a special copyright tag for DVDs, {{template:Non-free DVD cover}}, and broad (but possibly not universal) acceptance of using DVD cover art for identifying the DVD. Simply upload the image, apply that copyright tag, state the source of the image, and be sure to include a non-free use rationale for each article in which the image is used. Using these or images in "tables", lists, galleries, etc., is prohibited. You're welcome to start a discussion on that subject - this is the place -- but the opposition is strong so I don't think you'll find a consensus. Using 2-3 images to show a DVD in different regions is arguably not a list, but you run into another question, significance. Showing what a DVD looks like in different regions probably doesn't increase the reader's understanding of the DVD enough to justify use of two images, and I don't think it's likely that this significance test will be weakened. Wikidemo 18:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Well I did just that. In the example of Miami Vice, I basically wanted to add one dvd cover for each season for identification. I was told that I couldn't do that because it needed "Critical Commentary" and it was subsequently deleted. Are these allowable or NOT; and if its not what will it take to changes this? There is no reason not to be able to this. FrankWilliams 15:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree completely with Wikidemo. I've seen this come up a few times, and often with the same editors. In one case, the editor in question simply refused to follow the statement of policy and went to another article to institute the same sort of edit. If naught else, we should perhaps clarify when DVD images can be used (noteworthyness, etc). - Arcayne (cast a spell) 20:03, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
The difference with Amazon is that Amazon is promoting the sale of these products, we are not. Wikidemo, what Frank is talking about is creating a gallery of images, like this--the images were deleted, but you can see where they were. Fair use does not cover the application of a gallery of DVD covers simply to show the differences in design. The only way there could be significance in the use of the DVD covers like that would be if there was some controversy over the artwork of the DVD covers. Otherwise, it's basically saying "hey, this DVD had a different cover art than this one." It has no weight, it's a simple observation. It would be like putting every single film poster that was created up, simply to show that they were different.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 20:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Ah, then one DVD cover max per article please, except the rare article about two DVD covers being different. And unless there's a special reason, only articles about the DVD in question. Amazon and Wikipedia are indeed two different things. Wikidemo 20:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Presently the policy is generally interpreted as not allowing multiple DVD covers in the article on a performing artist, actors, director, producer, etc., but allowing such an image allowing the cover image in the article on the work itself (the article on the film or other notable video). Planet of the Apes is an example of a work with more than one distinct production under the same name, a book and two films, rather than merely different releases of the same work. Note the way cover images are used in these three article (linked to from Planet of the Apes). An example off a legitimate use of a gallery is Western_painting, where examples of distinct, separate works are shown, but only one of each. If anything goes against the "minimal use" provision of the NFCC, it is this sort of display of the cover of every release, which amounts to a pictorial study of the marketing, not of the work itself. There is, IMO, no reasonable argument for putting up multiple cover images of different releases of the same product on the same article. Just pick one and run with it, unless there is some very important commentary to be made on a different release. A gallery of releases of the same product just to illustrate the differing cover art or marketing imagery will not pass WP:NFCC. ... Kenosis 21:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
But then which DVD cover or movie poster do you choose? It seems a bit arbitrary to say "you can have one, but it doesn't matter which one". Also, DVDs and movie posters are probably not the best example here. Book covers are a better example. See Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#Changes in covers over time. The best approach is probably to consider what would be done if all the images were free. A gallery of DVD covers or movie posters, or every single book cover for a book, would be removed even if all the images were free, because they add very little, or no, encylopedic content. Only when an edition is notable enough to have its own section or commentary (eg. 1st edition, 50th anniversary edition, completely revised publication), might it even be considered that cover images might be needed. And sometimes, for old books, it is difficult to get hold of a first edition copy. Also, remember that once a publisher has brought out a new edition, or replaced the covers on a product, they are unlikely to use the old covers again. Does that decrease the "commercial" feel of such old cover images in any way? What about covers of out-of-print books? Should they be treated any differently to covers of book currently in print? Carcharoth 21:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the Tasini decision (regarding reproduction of scholarly material in compilations or in forms other than abstracts) prevents that usage by inference. I am not sure of the basis for the inclusion of any DVD image that is not (as mentioned before) exceptionally noteworthy or encyclopedic (ie. Roger Waters' 1984 album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, wherein one cover had nudity and subsequent covers covered up the nudity). Honestly, I think the whole addition of DVD images is mostly a by-product of fan-cruftiness or an addiction to a GUI envirnment that should be more informative than is being represented in these instances. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 21:34, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Tasini decison? Could you expand on that a little bit, please? Carcharoth 21:40, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Kenosis used the phrase "different releases of the same work" - I think the terms commonly used are "editions", "releases", "adaptations" and "remakes" (plus some others, probably). The Planet of the Apes examples are remakes inspired by the original film. You also have spin-offs and sequels. Adaptations would be something like the examples in Category:Middle-earth adaptations, where you have films, radio dramas, and theatrical adaptations of the original story (a book), and also various games and parodies based on or inspired by the original story. This is why something like Frodo#Adaptations is arguably a good fair-use use of a gallery. The gallery accompanies text about the different portrayal of Frodo in different adaptations, rather than being different releases of the same work (5 pics of Frodo from the same film). Another example is Cleopatra (film). Well, it was, but I see that the image I was intending to use as an example, Image:Films named cleopatra.JPG, has been speedily deleted. I think I wrote the fair-use rationale for that - can someone look at the deleted revisions and check that? The image showed posters/covers for three different Cleopatra films, and did a good job, IMO, of illustrating the topic. Also, consider Image:1665 phil trans vol i title.png and Image:RSTB 362 1479 thumbnail.jpg. Same product? In some senses, yes, in other senses, no. Then look at Image:HMCoSecondEdHobbits.jpg. Same product being illustrated 11 times, but a definite reason for the image, unrelated to the normal reason for using an image of a book cover. Carcharoth 21:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

(response to inquiry) Sure. The Tasini decision (caselaw here, and a pretty nifty summary here). While the case doesn't specifically reflect on the matter at hand (DVD image artwork usage), it coveres many of the same issues of limited ownership by the artist and owners of the images to limit their usage without renumeration.
The reason its allowable on netsellers like Amazon is bc they are selling the product, just like one can purchase either a full avademic article or pay for the right to access them electronically. (I know a bit about it because some old articles I wrote were covered by the decision, and bc of it, the publishers negotiated for further rights to use the articles). As WP is free, we are moving into copyright territory and fair use than are a tad out of my depth.
The Tasani case has nothing to do with fair use of images for identification purposes. Cover art of CDs, DVDs, books, etc., is generally allowable on Wikipedia (and covered by fair use) for purposes of identifying the work in question. That we do so is not cruft or some kind of "addiction" to GUI, no more than our species' "addiction" to visual perception. Publishers, distributors, and creators use covers as the primary means to visually identify and brand their works because humans are visual creatures; we use to identify article subjects for a similar purpose. Wikidemo 22:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. The Tasini v. The New York Times case has absolutely nothing to do with fair-use of cover images. That case had to do with whole works originally sold or licensed for publication in print and later put online without the authors' permission. ... Kenosis 22:27, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Gentlemen what I've been arguing is what Wikidemo just said above. "Cover art of CDs, DVDs, books, etc., is generally allowable on Wikipedia (and covered by fair use) for purposes of identifying the work in question. I was identifying the DVD's via their covers in the appropriate articles which were clearly mentioned. Editors such as Arcayne have argued that this is not enough and that "Critical Commentary" are needed to justify the covers. Is "Critical Commentary" a necessary criteria?? If so why; and it can it be changed? I again use Amazon.com as an example. The fact they selling the items doesn't matter; they are "identifying" the product just as I was doing in the wiki articles. What's the difference? Just as Wikidemo says above "Publishers, distributors, and creators use covers as the primary means to visually identify and brand their works because humans are visual creatures; we use to identify article subjects for a similar purpose." AGREED. FrankWilliams 15:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

(and gentlewomen too) It's well accepted, and in the guideline, that cover art can be used to identify a product without critical commentary about the art itself. A small but occasionally vocal minority occasionally argues otherwise. But the current consensus is clear: A single DVD cover in an article about the DVD is okay, multiple DVD covers in an album is not. As with everything, subject to exceptions. I don't think we need to modify the guideline or policy to drive the point home any more explicitly than it is already. Wikidemo 16:02, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I stand correct, thanks Wikidemo. Gentlepeople, agreed, what I would like to do is have a sample DVD cover for each of the five seasons in the Miami Vice article. The pics are small and obtrusive and would be at the end of the article. Anyone have any problems with this? I gues under what Wikidemo says I'd be looking for an exception. FrankWilliams 18:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The issue is that the article is not about the DVDs, it is about Miami Vice. We don't need to show the reader what the DVD covers look like in order for them to understand the show. So there isn't a strong case to include any DVD cover images on that article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
So, can we add one DVD cover to the DVD section like say the Miami Vice Collection Boxset? That's what Wikidemo says, a single DVD cover pic is allowed. El Greco (talk · contribs) 21:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any discussion, much less a definitive understanding, as to how the policy applies to a boxed set, a series, etc. And not a whole lot of talk about re-issues, multiple editions, "collectors" or "deluxe" versions, directors' cuts, etc. My comments (and the consensus about use) are about the more common case of individual products in their primary or best known manifestations. Wikidemo 23:42, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, where do we go from here. Wikidemo you seem to have the most knowledge in this area. What would we need to do to show six images in the DVD section of the Miami Vice article? Do the rules need to be modified or just grant an exception? Thanks FrankWilliams 12:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

From what I can recall, the layout and design for the DVD boxsets is pretty much the same over all the series, so you could justify using one, but not all 7. You'll have to redo the table to remove the "cover art" column, and then put the example cover art next to some text explaining stuff about the DVD releases. Carcharoth 12:56, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Can the Miami Vice Entire Collection Boxset be included as well, making it two (2) DVD Cover Art images? El Greco(talk) 13:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
No, its just eye candy. there is no need to abuse Non-free images. βcommand 13:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Is this for an article about Miami Vice, or about the boxed set as a product? If it's about the show, I'm not sure that the cover art from a DVD actually serves a significant encyclopedic function to illustrate the article about the show. If the article is about the boxed set, I'm thinking it's probably word candy too, a non-notable article. Wikipedia isn't a buying guide, even if some people seem to think it is. Only a small portion of all the re-releases, boxed sets, DVDs of various seasons of a tv series, etc., are truly big enough of a deal that they should have their own article. If they were I would use a single picture of the cover art for the boxed set, maybe even take a 3D picture. But that's all just my opinion, and mostly a notability issue rather than an NFCC issue.Wikidemo 14:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

However, the artwork of the DVd has to be noted and notable for inclusion, right? Otherwise, it's just decorative eye-candy. That has pretty much been the rule thus far. If the the text doesn't specifically refer to why that particular image is vitally important to have in the article, then it shouldn't be there. Thoughts? - Arcayne (cast a spell) 14:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

DVD cover art is unacceptable per #8 of WP:NFC since the title screen for the TV show is already used as the identifying image. There is zero indication that "its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding." This should be done by providing actual content about the DVD cover itself. It is not impossible -- there has been notable DVD packaging like Memento and Evil Dead. It's a matter of direct commentary on the cover art, otherwise the images are just decorative. Miami Vice seems formatted that there is a possible consensus to include all DVD covers, which is ridiculous. Why is even one acceptable, if it does not meet #8 in the slightest? This is an encyclopedia, and images should be incorporated in an encyclopedic fashion. The vast, vast majority of media has some kind of cover, or even multiple covers, but we do not (or we try not to) drown media articles in images of them because they have no bearing on the article. The DVD release table is perfectly sufficient without the use of images. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 16:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

First, the Season 1 DVD actually has some informative stuff. For example see here[1], Can that justify just that DVD Cover Art on the Miami Vice page? If you created season pages, you could use DVD covers as identifying images. That is what Erik said on the eidt summary page. Does that include the List of Miami Vice episodes, or individual season pages? El Greco(talk) 16:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a difference between content about the DVD and content about the DVD cover. The DVD cover in no way reflects the bonus materials, the different subtitles, and the technical information. When I mentioned Memento, I was referring to its packaging, seen here, which was nonstandard and has received commentary. As for Evil Dead, seen here, again, nonstandard, and I'm pretty sure it has received commentary. When I mentioned covers as identifying images, I meant an instance like the cover of the DVD set identifying Smallville (season 1) or the DVD set of the Spider-Man film series. For an encompassing list of episodes, the title screen at List of Miami Vice episodes seems sufficient, as the cover of one DVD set would be too specific. Beyond these usages, though, if there are additional covers for whatever reason, they need to be backed by actual content regarding the covers themselves. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 16:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I see what you mean, I thought if you were implying that the DVD has something special like bonus material, than that would be okay, but you were implying if the DVD cover is just different. El Greco(talk) 16:50, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-commercial use only images

I've been plowing through CSD today, including a whole bunch of I3's - images uploaded as non commercial use only, educational use only, or for Wikipedia only. One of the license options we give people is that the creator has licensed this work for use on Wikipedia. It seems to me that this would suggest to the uploader that a non-commerical use only, educational use only, or Wikipedia use only image is okay. Then they upload their image and are immediately greeting with a massive tag telling them they fucked up. Since these images are not acceptable, this begs the question why allow people to select this tag in the first place? I understand that some non-com images are okay under a fair use guideline, but why not just immediately jump to the fair use rationale, instead of giving the impression that non-com images are okay? This just does not make sense to me. Natalie 23:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

If we don't have it, then people will take their best guess as to which of the other options is "correct", and we'll have a mess of Wikipedia-only images tagged variously as "attribution", "GFDL", "public domain", and various other incorrect choices. The average uploader only cares about getting the license correct if it's easy to do; otherwise, uploading is more important. --Carnildo 00:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
It is an unfortunate situation, but I agree with Carnildo that without the non-commercial tag, we would get a mess of incorrectly tagged images.  :-\ --Iamunknown 03:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
We already have a mess of incorrectly tagged images. Has anyone done a proper survey of "GFDL" and "PD" pictures to see if they have been properly labelled? I think what Natalie was saying is "require people who select non-commercial use only to be presented with a fair-use rationale form to fill in". This seems sensible. If you make the form simple, people will fill it in, rather than go back and back another (incorrect) choice. Carcharoth 05:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, I would be in complete support of requiring Template:Information and/or Template:Non-free fair use in on upload, if somehow the interface could be made user-friendly. Then Template:Noncommercial images would not be speedy deleted, though I imagine many would be deleted anyways ... at least, it seems that that category of images has a higher percentage of images that should not be here than the other categories.
That would be well and good for uploaders, and probably less bitey, but it would make the deletion (but not the speedy deletion) backlog even greater. Its kind of a win-lose (win for uploader, lose for image maintainers; win for image maintainers, lose for uploaders) either way.  :-\ --Iamunknown 06:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Nothing recent, but 18 months ago tagging of new uploads was about 60% accurate overall; GFDL-self and PD-self were used with about an 85% accuracy rate. Since then, the worst tags for accuracy ({{NoRightsReserved}} and {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}) have been removed from the upload menu, so the ratios will have changed. --Carnildo 07:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I still personally check for old uploads if the license is right or not, but those are usually one image out of, lets say, 20 or 30 I deal with. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 07:41, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I know the image uploading and tagging process is a huge pain (I didn't upload a single image until I had been editing for over a year). My guess is that people see the educational use only/non commerical use only option and are very pleased, because for people who don't know much about copyleft (which is practically everyone), GFDL looks a lot like releasing your work into the public domain. I could also imagine that many people are happy to see the non-com option because they think they can then upload a cool photo from National Geographic or what have you. I can see the point of mentioning the license, just so people don't get confused and think it's covered in some other license, but I don't see the point in allowing them to complete the image upload with only a non-com license selected. Perhaps directing them to a fair use license when they try to choose educational only would be best. Natalie 12:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Please see my first post: lying to a computer is not lying. If the computer won't let them upload the image with menu option "A", they will simply choose menu option "B" instead, regardless of the correctness of "B". If "A" is not present, they will randomly select "B", "C", or "Q". --Carnildo 18:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree with that sentiment. To be user friendly, our upload form should have options for all the common reasons for uploading images. If some of these options lead to the image being deleted, that's fine. But if we leave out the options that lead to deletion, users will just pick some other option, and it will be more difficult to find these images. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[rant mode on] No, our forms shouldn't save images in a way that applies a giant "TO BE DELETED" warning. Our forms shouldn't save those images at all. For that matter, "lying to the computer" shouldn't matter either, because every image upload ought to be checked by hand to verify that the description has enough elements present to establish the validity of the license (i.e. sourcing, etc.). If Wikipedia were really serious about ensuring copyright validity, even GFDL-self and similar claims would require verification in the form of the uploader's name and contact information. If you want to be serious about respecting copyrights then you should really be serious about it. Mucking around with licensing "traps" is no substitute for actually validating the legitimacy of uploads. [end rant mode]. 136.152.153.227 23:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you offering? I've found that, with significant software assistance, I can check the accuracy of 80 images an hour. Wikipedia gets about 2000 uploads a day, so it should only take 25 hours or so to check a day's uploads. Of course, there's the problem of burnout: trying to check more than 100 images or so at one sitting is almost impossible.
The fundamental problem here is that there are not enough people to do the job. Even with bots handling the easy cases (empty image description page, no copyright tag, or similar problems), it would take a group of 30 to 40 people to keep up with the flood. As far as I can tell, there are three or maybe four people on Wikipedia who both have the knowlege to handle image uploads and are willing to do the work. --Carnildo 01:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
In a best case scenario we can make the data fields more predictable, which could lead to flagging and deletion bots that are close to 100% accurate for people who simply leave off info. We can then categorize and prioritize image review depending on the type of image (via the copyright tag) and what it's used for (via a mandatory category field in the use rationale if non-free). Specialized review tools for different types of image use could then pull up everything you need on the screen at once for an executive yes/no decision. That's probably practical on a going forward basis within a few months, harder for existing "legacy" images that don't have such regular data formats. Note: this is a discussion point, not a proposal. Does anyone think that would make the task of image review manageable? Wikidemo 07:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
A bit more interactivity and feedback during the upload process would defenently be a pluss. Even without any backend software changes it's entierly possible to make a JavaScript that will hide the default upload form and instead present a multi stage "wizard" like interface (Ajax and what not) that would prompt for scertain key information (like a rationale for non-free images) and not let you proceed untill something has been entered. Sure people could still upload movie screenshots tagged as PD-self, sourced from aaaa and copyrighted by qwerty so there is no getting around manual checking, but it might at least help some of the many confused people out there... Maybe we should propose a "contest" to come up with a good upload wizard, anyone could make a proposal, it's just a matter of making a userscript that triggers when Special:Upload is loaded. People could test out the varios candidates by swapping them in and out of theyr monobook.js file with the apropriate includescript(...) call. Once a "winner" is selected and has been properly polished and debugged we can then install it in the global script to make it run for everyone by default. If someone disables scripting they will simply get the standard "old" upload form, so no big danger there. --Sherool (talk) 19:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
One goal of the proposal (below) is to make it easier for the upload wizard to create properly formatted description pages for nonfree images. The goal would be that if the image is nonfree the upload wizard should fill in the source, the title of the article where the image will be used and a rationale (brief justification) for the use. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:NFCC#10 is hard to understand

Where should the description of the original copyright holder go in the image article? In the source section or in the description section? WP:NFCC#10 doesn't make this clear. Thanks. Merlin1981 01:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

We're actually working on that very issue right now. For the moment you can put it anywhere you want. Thought it's not required, I would recommend adding a heading or a comment that is clear you're talking about the source, and including the full URL if it's from online. If you got it by scanning, photographing, etc., a statement of how you made the image and where the thing itself came from that you took the picture of. Hope that helps. Wikidemo 01:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I tend to put it in a section called "Source". The other section tends to be called "Licensing". Others include "Use Rationale". And probably some others I forgot. Standardising the order would be good, but not essential (bots can be trained to find sections anywhere on a page). Carcharoth 07:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Bots can trained, but as it stands NFCC#10 doesn't require any section titles at all on image description pages, so the lack of them can only be used as a possible indication of problems. This is one of the issues that the proposal (above) is meant to address. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:07, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of images

Due to renewed and consecutive deletions of images that I had uploaded I will significantly reduce the time I spent in the last year working for English and German Wikipedia.

I have only uploaded images that were accepted as "fair use" in the first place and images where I had allowance by the copyright holders.

For explanation I give these two examples.

(1) The article Website Pros had a picture of their headquarter in Jacksonville, Florida. It was taken from the website of the company. The image was deleted with the argument, "a free substitute can be created". The logic of this is astonishing. Do you expect me to travel from Germany to Florida to take a snapshot of this building? Yes, anyone else can, but nobody else does. Anyone could have written the article but nobody else did.

(2) In the deletion of this picture only two people were involved which is something I am very surprised of. It opposes any form of democratic procedure that is imaginable. One tags it, the other deletes it. Good team work!

I had the allowance of a world renowned photographer to use this picture in an article. The whole process took time and efforts to get the right to publish it in Wikipedia.

Obviously there are admins and users who nearly enjoy to delete work and time that others have invested. Proudly they call it their 20,000th edit. Disgusting.

I think this whole approach is misguided and harms Wikipedia. I see it as pure ideology of hardliners and purists.

Free text and free images shouldn't be confused. Wikipedia will never reach the quality of its articles with free images. Most of the free photos I saw in everyday Wikipedia articles are mediocre to say the best. The admins who have the majority at the time only think from their dogmatics and not from the needs for our users.

I am 51 year old and have a daily job to pay my bills. All time for Wikipedia is worthy extra time and I am not interested to spend my time with people who act in the way I've seen lately and tried to describe above.

Therefore in the future I will only update my existing articles and only start one or two new ones which I already have prepared.--Peter Eisenburger 17:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

So you're saying you will no longer upload images that violate our policies? And we're supposed to be disappointed by that? We're all volunteers here. The difference is that some of us take the community's rules seriously, and others prefer to do what they want. -- But|seriously|folks  18:34, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
This post is a clear example of what is wrong with Wikipedia. I wholeheartedly agree with you, Peter Eisenburger. -Henry W. Schmitt 19:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Me three. Welcome to the club Peter. I have been stopping by here for the past few weeks waiting for enough wikipedians to get angry with the current policy to put an end to it. I too am only contributing minor edits. Really, it's not worth the time to invest in something when kids (or adults who should know better) delete for their wildly misguided principals. You or I do not have the time to patrol Wikipedia 24x7 like some people do. -Nodekeeper 05:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
"Wildly misguided principals"? These are principles that are the bedrock of the Wikipedia project. The point of Wikipedia is to generate and distribute free content. If we allow people to upload clearly (and easily) replaceable images like existing buildings, we have forgotten our mission. Calliopejen1 12:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Some of the things we are doing now are mandated by the Foundation Board, so our hands our tied there. I also do not agree with some of the license choices (I wish we accepted ND images still, since there has been very few times we had to crop images). As mentioned before, while Betacommand and his bot tag images, he does not delete the images at all. He doesn't have sysop (admin) rights. If there is an image deletion that needs to be looked at, I will be happy to see them if DRV doesn't seem to be very helpful. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 05:55, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for agreeing to no longer upload problematic images. In response to your specific points:
(1) No, I don't expect you to travel to Florida. I expect you to contact one of the thousands of Wikipedians in the Florida area and ask for a photograph. Category:Wikipedians in Florida, Wikipedia:Requested pictures, commons:Commons:Picture requests, and Wikipedia:Photo Matching Service are good starting points.
(2) In case you missed it, Wikipedia is not a democracy.
--Carnildo 18:50, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Another route you can take is to ask the website of the company for a permission release; Wikipedia:Requesting_copyright_permission#For_images can give you some tips. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 18:55, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Betacommandbot is selecting fair use images for deletion, when they have a rationale. Sue Wallace 04:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Ignore me, I think it selected it cos I had the old album template. Sue Wallace 05:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Sue, can you come to my talk page and we can sort the image issue out?

As an immediate result of my statement two other pages were tagged [2] [3] All articles had been reviewed by other admins (including "deletionsts") before. --Peter Eisenburger 05:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

As one of the people that do watch over articles for fair use images, I am not surprised the action was taken. Plus, our policies on how we deal with fair use change over time. So whatever was ok maybe a few weeks ago is probably not allowed now (a very extreme example, but it is certainly true). With the first instance you just linked, it had a bunch of logos of the purchased companies. Generally, logos are used in articles about companies, mostly in the infoboxes. However, what some have thought is that the logos only served a decorational purpose on that article. But, they won't be deleted. The second image, I will personally look at that, since I don't think that is a replaceable image. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 05:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the historic photo is not a replaceable photo. That should be obvious. Carnildo, would you consider explaining why you tagged it as replaceable? Just a brief explanation or apology goes a long way in cases like this. Carcharoth 11:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I was the one that tagged it for deletion. It wasn't replaceable, it just didn't contribute substantially to the article. The article already says, "NetObjects, Inc. was elected as one of 25 Cool Technology companies of the year 1996 by Fortune Magazine." The picture was an ad that said something along the lines of "Voted One of the 25 Cool Technology Companies, 1996" and had some people in party hats. This is something that could be (and was) explained equally well with words. Calliopejen1 12:09, 1 October 2007 (UTC) Oops, never mind, thought you were talking about the earlier deletion. Calliopejen1 12:13, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
It looks to me like an identifying picture of four individuals, all of them presumably still alive. This is replaceable (fails criteria #1) and is exactly the sort of thing that counterexample #12 is about. --Carnildo 21:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Free screenshots

I know that the editors who frequent this page are particular busy now. A few creative minds, however, would be sincerely appreciated.

What we have is Category:Free screenshots ... a category that is used, misused and abused. It is meant only for screenshots of free software (as in software that is licensed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, or other similar licenses). It regularly fills up, however, with screenshots of television shows, of regular run-of-the-mill photographs, etc. This would not be a problem, but it is rather tiring to go through the category over and over again.

Of course, if we could get more editors active in maintaining the categories, this would not be a problem. I don't, however, expect or demand anyone to do such a thing (though I would appreciate it!).

My question, then, is: What can be done about this situation? How can the process to keep inappropriate images out of the category or off of Wikipedia (if necessary) be streamlined? Can the criteria for inclusion in the category be made more obvious? How can our image licensing procedures be made more accessible?

I bring this here because something needs to be done. The current situation of increasing demands on we image and copyright folks and increasing image uploads seems, to me, to be untenable. This is a rather small and isolated category, yet it is currently in need of constant maintenance. How can we change that? --Iamunknown 06:08, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

For starters, how about changing the name to something like "Free software screenshots"? -- But|seriously|folks  06:28, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Probably not a bad idea. I also see a lot of images just use the tag as is without supplying the required license parameter. I tweaked the template to add {{no license}} by default. That way OrphanBot should come along and notify the uploaders of such images that there is a problem. The whole tag is kinda useless anyway, it's not actualy a license tag, the license have to be supplied seperately, it's just a glorieid category wrapper... --Sherool (talk) 07:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Both great ideas. Butseriouslyfolks, how about Category:Free screenshots of software (to match Category:Free screenshots of video games)? Sherool, do you know if the images will be processed, given that they are in Category:Images with unknown copyright status as of unknown date 2007? --Iamunknown 13:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
If I remember correctly OrphanBot (or some other bot, I forget) will automaticaly "fix" those by simply applying a second no license tag with today's date when it comes across such images. It will look a bit messy, but it works. At least I think so. If they are still stuck in "unknown date" after a few days I guess we can just hard code in the date for all of them... --Sherool (talk) 14:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Non-free use rationales - article parameter

Does anyone else think this is a silly way to tag images? From what I can gather, looking at the history of Template:Non-free use rationale, an "article" parameter has been added. It would make more sense to update all such images, rather than tag them for deletion. I've fixed this one, but some process seems to have broken down here. Can we please get systems in place before tagging starts? Carcharoth 14:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink has: "This is not intended to be part of the deletion process" - but BetaCommandBot has (or is) adding tags that say "this image will be deleted after 7 days". So what is going on here? Carcharoth 14:22, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
As far as I know the article parameter has nothing to do with the tagging by betacommandBot, just a happy coincidence. It would be nice if the tag the bot was leaving would be a little simpler, friendlier, and more explicit on the point that the problem with the rationale is a missing / unclear statement of the article it applies to. Most inexperienced users won't get that easily just by mentioning it's a 10(c) violation. Betacommand and I have discussed this matter some, probably on this page. I believe he's refraining from tagging "legacy" images but proceeding on new images, on the theory that we can try to update old images before deleting them, whereas we don't want to encourage anybody to keep uploading noncompliant images. It's a fair call to say we should run a bot that adds the article name to the rationale in obvious cases where there's a single rationale and a single file link (perhaps with an invisible "dummy" parameter to signal that it was added by bot and needs hand checking). But nobody has made that call. Also, I think it is a good idea to add the "article" parameter to keep people on their toes for uploading new images. We're not going to delete images merely because the template says it's missing. And given the discussion about new rationales, this template is going to be deprecated in a few months anyway so it's not worth a lot of effort on it.Wikidemo 14:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Even as a free-content hardliner, I agree that it is silly. If an image is used in one article, 99.9% of the time the rationale has to do with the article it's used in. Especially when we're about to deprecate at least 40% and perhaps much more of NFCC 10, Wikipedians' time could be much better spent doing something besides adding article names to image pages where it's obvious. Whenever we get the new tags up and running, we'll have to go through all the books, cds, art, and logos again anyways. This is a ton of wasted effort and very off-putting to new and old users alike. If nothing else, please can we tag the cd covers and logos last, because they're rarely misused, and we will definitely be redoing them soon? Calliopejen1 14:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Replying to Wikidemo: OK, let's ignore the "article" parameter business on the template, and simply ask this question: "why did BetacommandBot tag that image?" From where I'm sitting, it is a classic example of an image that could have been quietly left in Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink until someone got around to fixing it. Is this a case of some arbitrary date (the image was uploaded in June 2007) meaning that this image is more likely to be deleted that the same image and incomplete rationale uploaded before a certain date? Carcharoth 14:56, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
It's a judgment call and I'm not arguing one way or the other. If you think that an image from June 20 shouldn't be tagged for deletion based on missing a backlink, what about an image uploaded yesterday? Is there any cutoff after which we put the burden on the image uploader to get things right? Even with the speedy deletion tag I'd argue that a reviewing administrator should take the time to fix the image instead of deleting it. This simply forces the issue. I think this too will be a moot point eventually. If and when we implement the new templates we'll have a lot fewer new images without the backlink. I'd be interested to see if the change to this one template helps the compliance rate. Wikidemo 15:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I would argue that any admin who speedy deletes an image that only needs a minor fix like that, should be named and shamed as indiscriminately deleting stuff in CSD without stopping to think. :-) And any admin that consistently does this should be cautioned in some way. I was tempted to leave that image alone and see if the admin that eventually dealt with it was able to see past the delete button. Carcharoth 16:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The ideal solution would be to get a bot to cross-reference CSD and Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink so that the recent images in Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink can be tidied up as well, rather than speedy deleted. Or find some way for the bots to recognise that only a minor fix is needed, and apply some suitable tag. Carcharoth 16:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)


BCBot does not look for the inclusion/exclusion of that parameter. BCBot does look for the article name. weather or not its in that parameter doesnt matter. As for tagging images. BCBot does ignore images uploaded prior to January 1, 2007. see this for images uploaded prior to jan 1, that have rationale problems. βcommand 23:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to get a list of articles tagged that were uploaded after Jan 1 2007, which could be speedily fixed (rather than speedy deleted) by adding the article name? ie. My suggested cross-referencing with Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink. It would be interesting to see if the admins clearing CSD do in fact look at images closely enough to fix them in such cases, as is often presumed. Speedy fixing would take, I think, about as much time as speedy deletion. Carcharoth 23:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

This is also being discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass image mistaggings by BetacommandBot. Carcharoth 04:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


Getting the non-free image description correct is becoming more and more like the children's game Simon says. It does not matter if all of the information is there, it must be in an exact format. And the format changes at random times. -- SWTPC6800 05:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The effect (unintentional, at least I hope so), is that a tweak of the rules, followed by a batch of tagging, complaints, some half- hearted reversions and fixing, and lots of deletions, is that the amount of non-free content steadily decreases with each tweak. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Some unnecessary non-free content is lost, but some good non-free content is also lost. Some contributors of unnecessary non-free content leave in disgust, but some contributors of free content (free text and non-free images) also leave in disgust. Overall, whether the effect is good or bad is not yet clear. What is clear is that the process could be handled better. The ideal process would not bite new contributors, would be good at finding specific problems that are easily fixed, would be stable (ie. rules not changing over time), and would be choked to tag only at a certain rate. Carcharoth 05:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The ideal process for not biting newbies, IMO, is contained in the new proposal for streamlining NFCC#10 (see below). That will come with more user-friendly templates and changes to the upload wizard to help people more reliably add the required information to the image file. If this works out we'll get the images straight in the first place instead of scratching our heads to figure out what to do with noncompliant ones. I think this whole thing is just a boundary / transition issue: how to deal with images being uploaded today - or back to January 1, 2007 - until we can transition to a better upload process. An important issue to be sure but there is hope in sight. Wikipedia is always a work in process, you know... Wikidemo 15:16, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:GSFDL

I've opened a discussion on the next generation of our license (important since if we are going to get free media we have to have a license people like) at Wikipedia:GSFDL comments from as many as possible are requested.Geni 03:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for fair use tag for dead people in their biography infoboxes

This is an extremely common use for copyrighted images, but we have no tag to track it. Part of the problem with this going on unregulated is that there are no standards for what constitutes a sufficient search for a PD image. I see this a lot where people are adding nonfree images and there are perfectly good free images in the LOC. This also could have mandatory birth/death parameters, so if someone says the subject was born in 1885 or so we could insist that a free image is probably out there somewhere. Any thoughts? Calliopejen1 17:49, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

A similar issue exists for more recently deceased people - it's not all impossible to get free images for them, either. I recently tracked down photos for David Hackworth and Lea De Mae. Videmus Omnia Talk 18:00, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Indeed that's a fairly significant class of photos here. In light of the discussion about changing the image page data format, that might also make sense as a non-free use rationale template, or perhaps a parameter within a copyright tag. The distinction that a person is deceased or alive is already being made on the talk page as a flag in the biography wikiproject tag. That could be added to the person infobox as well, or derived from the death date. But is there any practical way to migrate or transclude that information over on the image page for purposes of evaluating use rationales? Wikidemo 19:17, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Weeeel, it's a bit hesitant about making any generic rationale tag for images of diseased people, sure the replacability and purpose of use bits are fairly straight forward, but unlike logos and cover art and such these images can come from any number of sources, some of wich are in the business of selling licenses to use the images itself and thus such images could easily get into trouble with WP:NFC#2 or even the base legal requirement for fair use. The copyright tag bit is not a bad idea, it would as mentioned above make such images easier to track so we could make sure the provided rationales makes sense, I'm just not sure it's a good idea to try coming up with an official "catch-all" rationale for this rater broad class of images (it would probably be better than a lot of the "he is dead" kind of rationales we sometimes see, but it might encourage even more indisciminate uploading of such images). --Sherool (talk) 21:14, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Diseased people? :-) I see your points, but none of these fair-use tags are meant to make images bullet-proof. NFCC#2 would still over-ride normal fair-use. I also think an iconic historic image would, in turn, over-ride NFCC#2, but I digress. One problem I see with this is that when someone dies, stuff will need updating. I'd also like to add the caveats that a free photo of a person as a child, or in extreme old age, may not be a suitable replacement of a non-free image, no matter how free the childhood/old person photo is. Carcharoth 23:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
A rationale tag would be useful but probably couldn't be generic. At the one extreme there could be a "photo of deceased person in article about the person" template, and when you get there it has two fields: (1) article name, and (2) fill out the rationale please! That's still a help because it helps sort and categorize the image uses. At the more detailed extreme, a few things that are common to all such photos could be included, e.g. a checkbox with some items like "are you sure that there is no free equivalent to this image?" and "does this image add substantially to the reader's understanding of the article", "is the resolution, size, and crop area no more than necessary to illustrate the subject of the article" and the free-form text information could be added as template parameters, e.g. "why is this needed in the article?." Then there is some image-specific information, like "name of individual(s) in photograph", "are you sure they are dead", source and resolution, copyright owner, "is this from a photo bank", etc. Please don't take my exact field names too seriously, I'm just illustrating that these kinds of photos can't have generic rationales but that it can still help to format the info in templates. As for implementation, any new copyright or rationale template, or other mechanism, should probably be designed to dovetail with the new proposed image file data formats, and best to wait until that's been approved. We're talking the easy, uncontroversial stuff like logos first, but that could help when it comes to tougher cases like pictures of deceased people. Wikidemo 00:49, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
These are reasonable approaches to use for the upload page for NFC, in my opinion. ... Kenosis 22:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Template:Historic fur

I moved this from a different section because it was straying from the topic. Calliopejen1 02:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Incidentially, I was looking at Template:Historic fur, and was wondering why you thought it was "a controversial stock rationale"? Because it might be more prone to deliberate overuse because deciding whether something is historic is more subjective than deciding whether something is an album cover? Does this mean that those who can judge such things properly have to cut and paste the rationales instead of using a template? Are there not ways to have the template, but monitor it for incorrect use? Carcharoth 04:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I didn't nominate it for deletion (although I have considered it), so essentially what is happening now is that it is being used and monitored, because we can see what links to the template. The problem I have with this template is that whereas every single album cover in an infobox is used for the exact same reason, each historic image is used for a different reason. There's already a license tag to indicate that something is historic, which is how we can track it. There is no way, however, that a stock rationale can explain why a particular image is iconic and cannot be omitted without harming readers' understanding. I think you would need to cite evidence explaining the notability of the image, or at least a common-sense explanation of what the picture shows that goes beyond what a textual description does. I think where things are subjective you should at least require the uploader to explain what s/he's thinking when adding it. Calliopejen1 17:29, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, it is the licensing tag (here {{non-free historic image}}) that should be used to track these images, not the rationale templates. Monitoring rationales is definitely needed, but what about hand-written rationales? Are they more trustworthy because they have been handwritten? How do you keep track of handwritten rationales without a template to follow? The solution is to make the handwritten component part of a template. For example, what it says on the rationale template we are discussing: "Before saving, try the "preview" feature to review the text produced by this template. Be sure the language is true and complete. If not consider using the override fields or a hand-written justification.". I think there are two schools of thought here: (1) People will get sloppy if they can use templates, and will overuse and abuse them; and (2) Handwritten templates might make people stop and think, but people tend to just cut-and-paste anyway, and when they don't, they often end up writing a poorly-written rationale. The response to a poorly-written rationale probably also says something about the attitudes of the people involved. If the reaction is "poorly-written rationale - wouldn't agree with it even if it was better written - nominate image for deletion", then that is just finding excuses to delete. If the reaction is "let's fix this and write a template so people get it right next time", then that is, in my opinion, more constructive. Carcharoth 22:17, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we're really disagreeing here. I think the problem with this template is it doesn't have any required parameters that bear on whether the image should be included (e.g. how do we know this image is iconic? how will readers be harmed if this image is omitted? why can't this picture be conveyed in words?) and therefore is basically something that can be stuck indiscriminately on old photos. That's why I thought we shouldn't have people just substing this template--if we're going to have a bbunch of likely insufficient, identical rationales, we should be tracking them. I agree wholeheartedly about templating a lot of non-free stuff rationales (actually, probably the vast majority), and I will be the first to say that I think worrying about individualized rationales for CD covers in infoboxes like has been happening for the past months is ridiculous. I think we need to have more conversation about each individual category of nonfree uses and the relevant template parameters that matter. That's what I was getting at, at least indirectly, above when I talked about a dead people tag. Obviously there are several factors that affect whether we use such photos, but this needs to be implemented using a template/checkbox format.... As in, have you checked the LOC for an image? Have you checked flickr for an image? Have you gone to the library to find an old image with a confirmed date and copyright status? Is this image coming from somewhere that was selling photos? Was this originally a promotional photo given out to the press and fans? Etc. Calliopejen1 02:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Sounds great. I look forward to seeing the templates with those questions! :-) Carcharoth 10:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Simply as a procedural matter, our initial proposal for tempalted rationales only includes the four very basic cases (logos, album covers, book covers, and 2D / 3D artwork. We chose those because they're collectively very significant and also they're mostly uncontroversial. The idea is that once we have those four in palce, there will be a process for proposing and adding new ones to the list of approved templates, but only templates on that list will be deemed valid. If you jump the gun and start using a new template outside of the approval process it will start out as invalid on day one...and I really don't think we want to expand the list just yet because it's more important to get this thing in place than to get sidetracked over other templates that are more complicated or controversial. If we get too far afield the whole project could fall apart. So one thing at a time. Wikidemo 11:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

So, what is the copyright status of email text? I ask in the particular case of image:24-19-1.jpg, since it is basically a screenshot of an auto-reply email. Any ideas? Drewcifer 01:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It belongs to the author of the email. You need a bit more in your fair use rationale: even a "fictional email" must have an author; they don't descend from heaven on stone tablets. If the "author" is whatever organization runs this game -- presumably 42 Entertainment in this case -- then that's who should be mentioned there. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I can't wait for the day that we have a picture uploaded with the rationale "descended from heaven on tablets of stone" - copyright vested in Mr. J. Christ in perpetuity. Non-commercial use only. Carcharoth 01:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Fortunately, I think there's existing case law on that. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
So by the same vein would letters be copyrighted? Theoretically the two would have the same copyright status, but I can't imagine pen-pal letter having any copyright status. Drewcifer 02:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, a letter meets the threshold of originality. The fact that something's not intended for commercial use doesn't mean that copyright doesn't still apply. 17Drew 02:27, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Images from nps.gov?

Would images from http://www.nps.gov be considered free? I'm assuming so as it's a Federal agency. They give credit by name to the photographers in many instances of specific locations, but that is all. Would these be alright to use? This is a good specific example:

http://www.nps.gov/nr//travel/atlanta/cab.htm

On that page, the top right image is "Courtesy of..." a certain group, while the bottom one, as on this page, appears to be just listing the photographer's name. Any guidance would be helpful. • Lawrence Cohen 22:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a definite "maybe". If the picture was taken by an employee of the government as part of their official duties, then the image is free. "Courtesy of..." images usually weren't created by government employees, and thus aren't free. --Carnildo 23:31, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, those I'd assumed were out. For the others, I can find no copyright notice anywhere at all on the pages. Since they put courtesy of on some, I'd assume those are copyright, but the rest free. Or is that not valid for us...? • Lawrence Cohen 23:44, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

"Information presented on this website, unless otherwise indicated , is considered in the public domain. It may may be distributed or copied as is permitted by the law. Not all information on this website has been created or is owned by the NPS. If you wish to use any non-NPS material, you must seek permission directly from the owning (or holding) sources. NPS shall have the unlimited right to use for any purpose, free of any charge, all information submitted to NPS via this site except those submissions made under separate legal contract. NPS shall be free to use, for any purpose, any ideas, concepts, or techniques contained in information provided to NPS through this site."

http://www.nps.gov/disclaimer.htm (SEWilco 00:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

Ah, splendid, thank you! • Lawrence Cohen 13:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

some help?

The images in the article Israel Defense Forces ranks are mostly tagged with {{GFDL}}, but are sourced to http://dover.idf.il/IDF/About/Insignia/דרגות+קצינים+נגדים+וחוגרים.htm. I cannot read Hebrew, but it appears that the images are under some fashion of copyright per the text at the bottom of the page: "צבא ההגנה לישראל © 2007 כל הזכויות שמורות RSS | תנאי שימוש" Can anybody here help out with this? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 00:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

An online translator strongly suggests that it means "Copyright (c) 2007 Israel Defense Forces, all rights reserved". --Carnildo 20:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

German Wikipedia template for old pics that are probably but not certainly public domain

Have a look at de:Vorlage:Bild-PD-alt-100. An online translator turns it into this:

"The period of protection for the original collecting main of this file ran off most likely after the yardsticks of German copyright, which file therefore treated as in common-free. Note: This acceptance does not correspond accurately to the legal regulation. The probability for a pursuit by a holder of a right is however so small that the German-language Wikipedia bears the file. Thus the existence of a copyright protection is not impossible. For this publication the Uploader is responsible. This component should be used with files, whose original collecting mains are old between 100 and 150 years and whose author and/or its death date does not admit is (for older pictures please Vorlage:Bild PD old use)."

I think this means:

"It's probably public domain under German copyright law, but we don't have the information to be legally precise about it. It is very unlikely that a copyright holder exists, or will assert rights, therefore we host it on German Wikipedia, and not Commons, but the uploader is still responsible. Use this for files between 100 and 150 years old where you don't know the author or author death date. For older images, use PD-old."

Does this sound like something Wikipedia could use? Carcharoth 22:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... I would prefer we not use it. An image that is likely to be free but for which we do not have sufficient information is probably okay with another PD tag (at least, I don't list them for deletion unless I have good reason or the claim seems particularly specious). Having a template like this makes it seem as if these images have a separate copyright status and are thus acceptable to Wikipedia... which, in my opinion, is not a good thing. --Iamunknown 02:45, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
This would be another PD tag. Just one labelled "don't upload to Commons". Like the "1923 outside the US" one I've mentioned in the previous section. Carcharoth 02:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

stippled portrait images

I know people have talked about this before as an alternative to copyrighted photos, and I just noticed the awesome stippled portrait at Jorge Luis Borges. I contacted the uploader and he said he drew it and would be willing to draw a few more more if he had some spare time. He asked if there was a list somewhere of articles needing such illustrations.... Any ideas of important biographies that are missing free images? Calliopejen1 14:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Awesome? It looks like an artwork, rather than a photo. Should an encyclopedia use artworks or photos to illustrate articles on people? If no free images are available, we should use non-free ones. This would be no different to using fan art. If the stippled artworks copy existing non-free photos, then the underlying copyright is still a concern. Carcharoth 23:33, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
The last time we had this conversation (see Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content/Archive_26#Portrait_illustrations_as_partial_solution) people were quite enthusiastic. I think it is a great idea because it reduces our reliance on nonfree images--and creates new free content that can be reused by downstream users--and still serves the function of a photo (to let people know what they looked like) without looking too hokey. The Wall Street Journal has long used this method and I don't think its readers are any worse off because of it. Yes, it is a copyvio if the drawing is based on one specific photo. But no photographer can copyright what a person looks like, so it should not be a problem if an artist can look at several images and draw based on a generic idea of the person's features. Calliopejen1 01:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, I think it's a bad idea, because a serious encyclopedia would put quality of content ahead of free/non-free considerations, but if enough people support this sort of thing, I won't oppose it. Carcharoth 04:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I liked this idea before, and still like it. It might depend on cultural background regarding how professional it looks though. When I see these types of images I think of the WSJ, and it looks professional. I don't know how I would feel if I didn't have that as cultural background though. - cohesion 06:19, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
If we could be as good as the New Yorker, biographical drawings would be wonderful and add a unique signature style to Wikipedia - in this limited set of circumstances where a portrait does just as good a job of bringing a deceased celebrity to life as a non-free image, and there are no suitable free photos available. I personally like the Borges stippled portrait a lot. A couple big things that stop it from being ideal are: (1) it's going to be very hard to enforce stylistic consistency and quality - not everybody is as gifted as this artist, and when people have their images removed for quality reasons there will be hurt feelings; and (2) it will be exceedingly difficult to police the artists to make sure they are not simply tracing and copying photos that are copyrighted. It's okay to use one or more photos as inspiration for a portrait, but not okay to copy elements of the photos for the portrait. The line is very, very subtle. Wikidemo 11:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Answering the question about biographies needing pictures: See Wikipedia:Requested pictures and Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of people. (SEWilco 05:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC))

Non-English sources

I'm trying to find a picture of Christian August Friedrich Peters (1806-1880) to illustrate both his article and one of the sections at Astronomische Nachrichten. The best one I've found so far is here. Can anyone who know German help out with identifying the source of the picture? What is the copyright/public domain status here? Can we use that picture or not? (The picture is near the bottom of the page). Carcharoth 11:49, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I also found a German pic of a later editor, de:Bild:Adalbert Krueger.jpg. It looks like there is an outdated tag on that pic. Can anyone help here? Can it be uploaded to commons? Which tag? Carcharoth 12:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Final example is Hermann Kobold. Picture at this website (and a few others). What is the rule of thumb here? If a website doesn't say anything about where they got the picture from, does that mean we can't begin to judge whether we can use it? Carcharoth 12:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I would upload the first two and not the third.... The first two died well before the 1923, so common sense suggests--though does not prove--the photos were published before 1923 as well. I would say about 80% of PD-US pictures on en.wiki are photos that were taken before 1923 but we have no proof of publication, so if we're not accepting this sort of images, we have a lot of deleting to do... The last photo, though, is of someone who died in 1947, so I wouldn't upload it. Calliopejen1 13:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I'll do that later on today. Carcharoth 14:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Remember it only goes if was first published in the United States prior to 1923. It's an important point to note.
Also you are getting confused about the object of the photo and the photographer. You can use template:PD-Old, if the photographer died more than 70 years ago. For example if John a photographer died in 1950, but took a picture of Jane a celebrity who died in 1920, that picture will not be in the public domain until 1950+70=2020, unless it was first published prior to 1923 in the USA. Obviously if the photo was taken less than 70 years ago you can be sure it won't be PD-Old material. Jackaranga 20:59, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
And you are also getting confused, I'm afraid (it happens with copyright law because it is complicated). PD-old is 100 years after the death of the author. You are probably thinking of {{PD-old-70}}. The point about the photographer clause is that it is meant to protect the rights of the photographer to their work. This applies to photographers who asserted copyright over their works. In many cases, photographers in the early period of photography did not assert such rights (the photos would have been done in a studio and paid for, or done by amateur photographers). It was even less likely that their estate would assert the rights over such photography after the death of the photographer. It is quite possible that you are descended from someone who took some of these photos of uncertain origin. If you could find the evidence, you could assert the copyright that descended to you from that photographer. Are you going to? The real point here is that it is rare for records to still exist 100 years later, if indeed any such records ever existed at the time. When you apply all this to a modern photograph, it all becomes much more sensible. The photographer is alive and well and being credited for the photo and copyright is being attributed to him, and he can make money out the photograph until he dies, and then his estate can continue to make money out of the photograph for another 70 years. Then it falls into the public domain. That is a whole different world from old photos with no authorship information, and no likely prospect of authorship or copyright owner information. Apples and oranges.
The real problem, of course, is a lack of information. One side of the argument goes "ooh, not enough information, better be safe than sorry, can't use the picture". The other side takes a more common sense approach and says "well, if this was a modern picture, there is a high probability that a copyright owner might turn up and complain, but as this picture is very old and the provenance is unclear and unlikely to become any clearer, then we can probably safely presume public domain status until shown otherwise, and in any case, it is highly unlikely that anyone is still claiming copyright". Hypothesising unknown photographers and possible death dates for these unknown photographers is, quite frankly, silly. Without any conclusive information on the author, the sensible thing is to default to the clauses that deal anonymous or pseudononymous author, and operate on the dates from the moment of first publication (with slightly different conditions applying if there is no information about when it was first published). That is why we have {{PD-EU-no author disclosure}}. The equivalent in US law for pseudononymous authors is "Under American copyright law, the copyright term of works published under a pseudonym extends for 95 years from publication. The date of death of the actual author behind the pseudonym is not relevant. 17 U.S.C. 302(c)." (this is very relevant for many free pictures uploaded by pseudonymous Wikipedia authors, as 95 years is the point at which they will turn from freely-licensed copyrighted pictures into public domain pictures). I'm not sure what the equivalent is for anonymous authors or those authors where authorship was not asserted at the time of publication. Carcharoth 22:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
We don't have {{PD-EU-no author disclosure}} so that one can say, "Oh, well I found this picture, but it doesn't have any information, so I guess that it is {{PD-EU-no author disclosure}}" ... we have that template with the daveat that, "Reasonable evidence must be presented that the author's name (e.g., the original photographer, portrait painter) was not published with a claim of copyright in conjunction with the image within 70 years of its original publication." To me, reasonable evidence does not include a bare assumption ... but reliable sources or, at least, an exhaustive search of the copyright renewals database or something. --Iamunknown 02:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
See the section below. Carcharoth 02:36, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I should just use {{PD-US-1923-abroad}}? That might be simplest. I can't prove when it was published, but as was said above "about 80% of PD-US pictures on en.wiki are photos that were taken before 1923 but we have no proof of publication, so if we're not accepting this sort of images, we have a lot of deleting to do...". Carcharoth 02:41, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Well, that brings up concerns, because the Wikimedia Foundation is moving into the Ninth Circuit, and the cut-off date for foreign works might not be 1923... (see Peter Hirtle on Twin Books v. Disney, and this related question on Mike Godwin's (the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel) talk page. --Iamunknown 03:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Switching to 1909 would be fine here. I don't get that comment though - why this "switch to 1909"? Carcharoth 03:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
      • We—i.e. the Foundation—might need to consider a "switch to 1909" because of the precedent in the Ninth Circuit, which includes California, of Twin Books v. Disney. It is detailed well by Peter Hirtle at that link I linked to earlier. The Foundation is, of course, located in Flordia, but will soon be located in San Francisco ... see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-09-24/Relocation. So it is unclear by which precedent—the Ninth Circuit or the Copyright Office—we should abide. --Iamunknown 04:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
        • And what happened in Twin Books vs Disney? Please tell me Disney lost... Carcharoth 20:29, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
          • OK. I've read the link you provided earlier. Well, until I got bored that is (the introduction is funny, though). The thing that immediately struck me there is that (a) lots of money was involved, and (b) there was a well-documented chain of copyright assertion and claims and bequethal. Guess what I'm going to say next... Do you see that in many other cases? How often do you see people going around kicking up a fuss about the picture that great-grandfather took 100 years ago? How often do you see people even aware that great-grandfather took this picture? Carcharoth 20:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Just upload at the commons under template:PD-Old, there is no point uploading on wikipedia, as it will probably just end up being moved to the commons anyway. And there it says This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years. So it's fine. Basically I have tried starting discussions about this stuff before, it's no point people will not agree to anything that could get 1000s of images deleted. Basically just follow whatever it says on the template, template:PD-Old. They even have a picture of the Mona Lisa on the commons, marked as PD, and when you click the link the uploader gave as a source it says "© Louvre Museum for the photo" lol. Basically just do what you like, and don't worry about it. Also it is 70 years and not 100, because in the EU it was decided upon 70, and the fact that the server is in the USA doesn't change anything because otherwise we wouldn't have commons:Template:PD-Iran for example.
To make it short upload PD images on the commons not wikipedia, and consider it is 70 years, not 100. Jackaranga 20:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Wow I use the word "basically" a lot. Jackaranga 20:51, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
That's fine. :-) Thanks for clearing that up. I'll try and remember to transfer it in the next few days. Carcharoth 21:01, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Upload / Deletion Stats

The effects of the effort to tighten non-free use can be easily seen in the image upload/deletion stats from this analysis. Dragons flight 01:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Apparently we are not deleting fast enough :-D Several peaks in deletions, I wonder if those were efforts to handle backlogs. -- ReyBrujo 01:25, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
No, they're obviously periods when Quadell was free of other responsibilities.  ;-) -- But|seriously|folks  01:50, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The first peak (the one in 2005) was when Jimbo declared "lack of source" and "lack of license information" to be speedy-deletion criteria. Scary that what was then a massive effort would now get lost in the day-to-day variation. --Carnildo 04:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm more interested in why there are peaks of uploading. you would expect peaks in deletion, as that is a stop-start process internal to Wikipedia. I was under the impression that uploads were fairly steady, but it seems there are peaks in that as well. Are there groups of people or single people, that upload in large quantities? Carcharoth 02:03, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

And a jump from under 500 uploads/day to over 2500 uploads/day in two years - is that consistent with the overall growth of Wikipedia? Carcharoth 02:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

It would be interesting to see a timeline of changes to the file upload pages. I would think that certain changes there would affect volume of uploads. -- But|seriously|folks  02:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I am not certain whether to be gladdened or dismayed.  :-\ In my opinion, it is good to be "freer" as in having less non-free content (though I know there are other opinions), but on the other hand, it is dismaying to consider that less uploads may correspond with disheartened contributors. --Iamunknown 02:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Hopefully, a good chunk of that is attributable to contributors who understand the rules and are self-limiting themselves to compliant content. -- But|seriously|folks  02:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
It seems more likely to be linked to the number of people editing; compare it to the number of edits being made. 17Drew 03:04, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Articles with fair use content, such as articles, come up weekly. Stuff gets released weekly; CD's, episodes, DVD's and those are generally the "safe areas" that Jimbo keeps on talking about. And, as mentioned before, the more folks we have include the folks who upload. I still upload here, though I am a sysop on the Commons. (keep in mind a lot of deletions are just for cleanup of non-controversial stuff) User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 03:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't be too upset, commons has increased their uploads by a lot. Maybe people are getting the message, and uploading their free content there :D - cohesion 04:04, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
We just hit 2 Million files this week. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 05:19, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Is that 2,500 non-free uploads a day or 2,500 total uploads a day? Some more data points I've been collecting for a few days regarding use of the non-free use rationale template: Template talk:Non-free use rationale#The count. Wikidemo 06:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Total. Dragons flight 16:39, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
There may be many ways of interpreting the graph in light of the growth of the wiki, "free licensed" vs. non-free-licensed, etc.. But I want to say the ability to chart this and discuss it is an excellent step forward. ... Kenosis 05:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Notice: proposal to change NFCC#10

The proposal got archived. I'm restoring it as this should be kept visible. Maybe put it at the top of the page? Carcharoth 11:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I am announcing a proposal to change certain aspects of WP:NFCC#10, the part of policy about image description pages. This proposal would simplify the data required on image description pages of nonfree images. It would also allow for certain common use rationales (like a book cover image on the article about the book) to be obtained from templates.

The proposal does not change any other part of the nonfree content criteria. But, as conversation on this talk page indicates, making the image description pages easier to format correctly would make it easier to bring images into compliance and make it easier to detect new images that don't provide required information.

The proposal is at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal and its talk page is Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria/Proposal. This proposal was developed by conversation among User:Anetode, User:Betacommand, User:Wikidemo and me. We hope others will look over it and discuss it on the associated talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

What purpose does NFCC#10 serve? This information is easily obtained from the "what links here" link. Adding a list of articles that use an image seems like a waste of time and effort to me.--Rtphokie 19:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
NFCC#10 is about the basic data requirement for each non-free image. The crucial things are: (a) copyright status, (b) source - where it came from and/or who owns it, and (c) use rationale - a justification for why it's okay per Wikipedia policy and US fair use laws to use the image without permission even though copyrighted. The article name is part of the third requirement. You're right that we can get that from the "file links" info on each image page. The rub is that there is often more than one use per image. Whether it's okay to use a copyrighted image or not is highly dependent on the exact use, so the use rationale has to be customized depending on the article. That's why the article name has to be mentioned, so we can keep straight which rationale is for which use. Wikidemo 22:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't follow you. Doesn't the "file links" provide a means for finding all articles that link to that image? What does listing those articles in the basic data provide that the file links do not? Other than a high probability for missing information. I understand the other requirements but this one seems silly.--Rtphokie 20:02, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Would it be possible to change the requirement so it's only required where more than one page links to the same image? That seems like a more sensible approach. The odds that someone would write a rationale for one page, then it gets linked to another page, then someone removes it from the first page, creating a mismatch, seem pretty small. I would say it should be only if it's on multiple pages, or if the rationale is challenged for the first page. Calliopejen1 21:26, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I understand where you're coming from, but I don't believe that would satisfy the "machine-readable" part of the Foundation's resolution. Videmus Omnia Talk 21:33, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
That permits a (not uncommon) error, where there are two uses A and B, and one rationale. It's not clear whether the rationale is for A or for B. Eventually the image gets removed from article A and we're only left with article B. There's one use and one rationale but without the explicit indication there's no way to know whether the rationale is truly for that use. Anyway, people are working on some improved image rationale templates that will explicitly require people to type the article name in. Maybe someday the very act of adding a non-free image to an article will cause this to happen automatically. Moreover, there are plans afoot to go through as many old images as possible and add the article name where it's missing but obvious. So if you can bear with it for a couple more months it will probably get a lot easier. Wikidemo 11:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Next step

I've archived part of the discussion on the proposal talk page to indicate that we had nearly unanimous consensus to adopt the proposal. Now that we've decided to do it, the real work comes. We need to design and propose the various templates, and get ready with implementation details. We're planning to take this live on Jan 1, 2008, but we ought to have everything in place long before then so there are no glitches. Let's keep the momentum going here. Wikidemo 15:35, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I'll be happy to help where I can. Where will most of the work and discussion take place? Over there? Carcharoth 05:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Another image deletion matter

I've recently ran across another user who started tagging about 100 logos per night for lack of use rationale or source, without distinguishing between "legacy" images or appropriate non-free uses. This affects articles on some of the more important organizations in America - for example, Image:Marshall Field's logo.svg, Image:QwestLogo.png, Image:US Bancorp logo.png, Image:Norwest logo.png, Image:American Civil Liberties Union logo.png‎, Image:Salon.com logo.png‎, Image:Slate logo.png‎, Image:ZDNet logo.png, Image:Thomson logo.png, etc. In reviewing and spot checking I see many of the tags were in error, for example this one. I would guess from my examination an error rate of 10-20%, depending on your threshold for accepting a use rationale as legitimate.

I've tried to discuss this on the editor's talk page but she has not agreed to concentrate on the new images, try to save rather than deleting images, etc. I'm hoping we can just get everyone to agree to take things slow while we work on our new proposal. What I'm afraid of is that if mass tagging and deletion of old images continues it forces the issue at a time when we are making some real progress. So far Betacommand has himself agreed to concentrate on the newer images first, and we seem to have an understanding that others aren't going after the old images in bulk just yet. If that understanding holds I think we can get something in place - we seem to have agreement. If not, we may need to make it mandatory by adding something to NFCC or CSD. Wikidemo 09:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a grossly inaccurate misrepresentation. I tagged about 100 images last night, and last night alone. It was the first time I've ever tagged so many images. The editing I do varies, I don't really do one particular thing, sometimes I edit articles, sometimes I tag images. If anyone has any questions for me, then they are welcome to ask them at my talk page, as I will not be responding here. I'm not into wiki-politics for reasons I have made clear on my talk page. Thanks to all.
Seraphim Whipp 10:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
My mistake. It was about 275 images in a single night between 22:00 and 00:30 UTC - they were evenly divided across the two dates so I incorrectly thought it was 100 per night for two nights instead of 275 in one night. I'm at a loss here. It's going to be a pain to clean up the mess. She says there's nothing to oblige her to stop and she won't even participate in the discussion because she doesn't like "politics." This comes on top of last week's problem with Osama. If this keeps happening it could derail what we're trying to do. Let's see if someone else has any ideas - the mis-tagging problems aside, this would be so much easier if she would simply leave the legacy images alone for now. Wikidemo 11:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree wholeheartedly with Wikidemo. This mass tagging craze is simply becoming counterproductive and has to stop. Here is another editor rashly tagging masses of images lacking rationale/sources/copyrights without properly verifying beforehand. And from what it sounds like above, uncooperativeness coupled with personal attacks isn't going to get us anywhere. -- Chris B • talk 15:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
In a quick check, that user seems to be working at slower speed and fixing more images than tagging. Wikidemo 22:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this would derail the proposal or anything. You will always have people acting under the strict rule of policy, that's unavoidable. The good thing about (most) logos is that they are easily replaceable :) - cohesion 01:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone know what font Image:Slate logo.png is? It seems like a familiar non-custom one (but I cannot identify it by name). If so, could it may be able to be tagged with commons:Template:PD-textlogo... (but, to be honest, I don't really understand how that tag works). --Iamunknown 12:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
WhatTheFont says Arial, but that's probably not correct: the 'S' and 't' are the wrong shapes. Identifont can't narrow it down beyond about 1200 possibilities. --Carnildo 22:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Before this dicussion becomes fully forgotten, I'd just like to express my thoughts. Firstly (to Chris.B). Please outline any part of my dialogue with Wikidemo that consitutes a personal attack. I happen to have respect for Wikidemo for being the kind of editor he is. Personal attacks are unnecessary and I strive to make sure that I maintain civility when editing any part of wikipedia. Secondly (to Wikidemo) the way in which you approached me, I felt, was accusatory, with the attitude that what I was doing was not allowed (i.e tagging images). I felt like you were trying to bully me into doing things your way ("consequences"). I know that probably wasn't your intention at all - I'm just letting you know how it felt being on the other side. What you were asking of me was something that I had the choice to refuse or accept, and either outcome was fine under policy. I couldn't seem to make it clear that I was allowed to not do what you asked. Even above ("she won't even participate in the discussion because she doesn't like "politics." "), you seem like you're belittling me for not wanting to get involved with part of the project I dislike. But it doesn't matter now.

As cohesion points out above "You will always have people acting under the strict rule of policy", although I was not acting under the strict rule, I was just exercising my right to do what policy says.

It just felt like I was being portrayed unfairly; I just wanted to make things clear.

Seraphim Whipp 12:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Bot recognition of sources

I see that OsamaKBOT adds no source tags. What is the normal way to make sources machine-readable so the same bot won't come back and tag it again? Is this an acceptable way to add a source so that a bot can recognise it? If not, then OsamaKBOT needs to instruct people on how to do this. I've notified the bot operator. Carcharoth 18:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

that bot needs shut down and indef blocked. There is zero method for a bot to ID sources, Ive thought about it but the human factor makes checking for sources via bot impossible. βcommand 19:00, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Ah. Thanks. What about reviewing the tags it added? Carcharoth 19:29, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Alas I no longer have access to the tools to mass revert the bot, but that is what should be done, for all edits still on top. βcommand 19:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
It's possible for a bot to check images for sourcing in a very limited way. OrphanBot will add no-source tags to newly-uploaded images, but only if the image description page is empty, or the image description page contains only image copyright tags that do not specify the source. --Carnildo 20:41, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I've asked on the user's talk page for the user to stop doing this and reverse the tags. They've done this before and apparently stopped and removed all the tags. Both times, going through new and legacy logo images in alphabetical order, proposing deletion to a bunch of perfectly good corporate logos in articles about the organization. Does anyone have any relationship with Osama to ask if they'll work with the rest of us instead to fix these? It would be a lot easier to do this the easy way than to have to go through AN/I, have the bot blocked, etc. Wikidemo 21:12, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I can't understand what's the problem is. the most tagging was right. and I have a BRFA to BAG. Images without source must be tagging and deleting or fixing per Wikipedia's policy (not mine!). All one know all bots have some bugs and problems my bot has some and all these has fixed (known ones). I welcome with any post about my bot here.--OsamaK 21:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
The problem is you've now tagged for deletion several hundred perfectly good corporate logos of some of the biggest and most important companies in the world, in longstanding articles where they belong. We're trying to get these images in line with policy, not delete them. You've completely ignored requests to stop, and you're violating Wikipedia by running the bot. I don't buy the argument that it's okay to violate policy in order to enforce policy. I don't know what good it's supposed to do to discuss the issue on your talk page. You've ignored past posts to your talk page on the subject. Is the bot still blocked? If not, please cut it out so it doesn't become an AN/I issue. Wikidemo 23:47, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
OsamaK: I'm not sure if you're aware, but the BRFA for that bot task was denied: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/OsamaKBOT 5. --Dynaflow babble 00:03, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Wikidemo, I know deleting is the last choice. So my bot notify the uploaders (All uploaders) if no one have fixed the image it will be deleted after 7 days from tagging date (there is no another choice because there are many "logos of some of the biggest and most important companies in the world" without source). This is not enough reason for stopping my bot. Dynaflow, yeah it does not work from some days ago.--OsamaK 02:28, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
You've been running an unauthorized bot for a couple weeks now, utterly ignoring everyone's warnings on the subject, and archiving all your talk pages that show those warnings. It's not up to me to argue the merits of image use and justify what's wrong every time someone decides to run a rogue bot. There are productive ways to deal with unsourced images and if you followed the rules and paid attention to the discussion you might be aware of some. It's your burden to get the bot approved. Not here on this page and not by me, but by the proper Wikipedia procedure. Three days ago that authorization request was specifically denied. Are you saying that you will stop running the bot or not? In answering that question, please keep in mind that if you do run the bot you are openly defying Wikipedia policy. In case that is not clear enough, consider this your final warning - stop running unapproved bots. Enough of this nonsense. How can we remove the bot's deletion tags? Wikidemo 05:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Agreed with Wikidemo (and as he can confirm, that's a rare enough occurrence that it should get your attention). Stop running the bot, or you'll be helped to stop running it. If you'd like to try and fix it so that BAG will approve it, go for it, but until and unless that happens, do not use it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
lol, has someone seen bot contributions? last edit with this bot was on 00:12, 17 September 2007 :). Seraphimblade, thanks for your helping. I want someone tells me what's the bot problem(s) is/are. then I'll fix them. --OsamaK 11:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
The bot's problem is that the current image description page format doesn't provide any way for a bot to tell whether a source is provided or not. So no bot will be able to tags images for lack of source without human assistance. That's why the bot wasn't approved. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
My bot was smart in the testing (but very few problems have fixed). no? tagging easy and good using bot.--OsamaK 13:26, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
(←)Can you describe the algorithm the bot uses to tell whether there is a source? Note that no URL is required at the moment, nor is the actual word "source". — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
If the human operator doesn't understand that the copyright holder (aka source) of a corporate logo is that corporation, it seems unlikely that the algorithm is of any value. Stan 14:35, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Just a comment -- copyright holder != source. The source is the place (often a website or printed material) from which the uploader obtained the image. The copyright holder is the owner of the copyright in the image. The latter is usually the entity identified by the logo, but the former can be quite different. -- But|seriously|folks  17:54, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
In the case of logos, the only pertinent copyright information for sourcing purposes is whose logo it is, i.e. source as origin, not as URL. Same thing for album and book covers, and other 2D cover art. We can decide for the future if we want to tell people to describe a website. I think it's more pertinent where the image actually comes from. Wikidemo 18:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
CBM, It finds (any URL, "source", and other keywords) -I have written this many :)- that's not very important, let me see what's the problem is :-\. Stan Shebs, sorry, I did not understand your comment. --OsamaK 16:19, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
But no keywords are actually required, so you shouldn't be tagging images for deletion just because they don't match the list of keywords you compiled. It would be acceptable to use your bot to make a list of possibly bad images, and then check them by hand. But a completely automatic system to detect sources will be too error prone. In any case, you must know by now that you need to get your bot approved before it can restart. To get approval, you will probably need to make sure that its edits are approved by a human before being made. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:23, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Actually, you've got a great idea there. Maybe something like Durin did with articles that use a high number of nonfree images, where a list is auto-generated and then people check through it? I think that would be very helpful, and I bet BAG would approve that in a second. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
We should require a templated statement of source in a predictable format, and once that's phased in it will no longer be an issue for new images. Carl, where is our proposal? Until we can discuss and implement the proposal we ought to table any consideration of automatic tagging or deletion of images for lack of an explicit source statement, and ask BAG not to approve any such bots without consulting us. It's an almost identical issue to an image lacking a written use rationale or identification of the article it's used in. In most cases it's in there one way or another and we can fix the images rather than marking them for deletion. Wikidemo 17:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
We can require it, but how many people will actually use it properly? At a guess, based on OrphanBot's encounters with image copyright tags, any "templated statement of source in a predictable format" will be 75% incorrect. You should probably look at User:Carnildo/Things OrphanBot found on image description pages. --Carnildo 19:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Part of the solution might be to get the upload wizard to add the template automatically, and prompt the uploader for a source. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi there! Check list by hand is very slow way, my bot did well with automatic tagging. All bots has "error prone" my bot has a very few errors as the testing. Wikidemo, it's listed for 7 days there Category:Images with unknown source. It would be good to start a new WikiProject to finding images' sources in these days! I'll help :)--OsamaK 19:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
any news? I think people have no problem with my bot, no? (I hope so :))--OsamaK 10:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, people have problems with your bot; that's why it wasn't approved. The current policy doesn't require anything that would allow automatic detection of whether there is a source provided. The proposal announced below would change that for new images. In the meantime, the only thing you will be able to do with the bot is make lists for people to check by hand. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:29, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
We are in a loop :). The current policy doesn't see anything about check using bot (there are some bots checking at the moment). CBM, list is enable at User:OsamaK/Images bot...--OsamaK 14:09, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

We are in a loop. Here it is: Creating a list of images that might or might not have a proper source listed = GOOD. Editing thousands of image pages (e.g., templating) in a way that may lead to images whose uploaders have followed all the rules, and which are thus legitimately resident on Wikipedia, being deleted (and doing all this without the approval of the Community) = REALLY FUCKING BAD. Your bot does both of these things, but the good does not cancel out the bad. This is why your bot would not have been allowed to exceed its 50-edit trial run, had you not decided to keep it running anyway, approval or no approval. --Dynaflow babble 15:10, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Dynaflow, I am sorry for this FUCKING :), anyway we do not talk about it now. I want to know what should I do also to get approval?--OsamaK 20:46, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval/OsamaKBOT 5, please.--OsamaK 21:02, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
If your bot is only compiling a list of images which lack sources your bot can read, and perhaps leaving a nice, polite note on each uploader's page informing them, in the clearest and most precise language possible, that their image might not be properly sourced and how to fix it, and apologizing if they really do have proper sourcing that your bot just couldn't read, I would really have no objection. (This would involve putting together, or having someone else put together for you, a modified, OsamaKBOT-specific version of {{Image source}}.) Unless you are writing OsamaKBOT an artificial intelligence algorithm worthy of a DARPA project, however, I don't think there's any way I or most of the others here would support the bot -- or any bot -- going back to nominating things for deletion per the criteria on which you're focusing. --Dynaflow babble 21:09, 30 September 2007 (UTC) [EDIT:] In regards to the exchange on the bot's BRFA Talk page, I agree completely with Betacommand's evaluation (now there's something I never thought I'd say in a fair-use image deletion debate). --Dynaflow babble 21:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
mmm, your English is very hard in the last comment :). as what I understand you want change bot's message? You can help me with change it. look there.--OsamaK 21:36, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
I've created a draft of a possible substitute for OsamaKBOT's current message here: User talk:OsamaK/Images. I think a lot of the confusion is happening because you may not be completely understanding what we are saying, due to our differing levels of English fluency. Discussions here about copyright law and en.Wikipedia's copyright policies are very hard to follow, even for many native speakers. However, the issue here is much simpler to understand. Your bot, as it was before it was stopped, was causing things to be nominated for deletion that didn't need to be deleted and shouldn't have been deleted. That made people upset. Most of us do not think that a bot would be able to tell the difference between a good source and a bad source, and depending on an administrator to save a "good" image with a misidentified source at the last minute before it is deleted is unrealistic and unacceptable. If the bot is to do anything, it should not put templates on image pages that cause those images to be deleted. I cannot make it much clearer than that. --Dynaflow babble 22:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we should approve a bot to do this, nor given the communications problems and unrepentant flaunting of bot policy would I favor of allowing this user to run such a bot even if approved.Wikidemo 23:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Dynaflow, I understand most discussion here :). Thanks for creating User talk:OsamaK/Images. I'll use it. Dynaflow, can you give me some examples for these images who have tagged but it should not deleted? (There are some examples ,but most them have fixed in last tagging, So give me some mistakes from last tagging.) Wikidemo, /me can't understand why.. ;).--OsamaK 11:42, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
How is your bot dealing with non-hyperlinked sourcing statements? How would the bot handle a block of text explaining the origins and copyright holder for, say, an obscure, scanned pamphlet, as opposed to a simple statement that says, "Source: www.thesourceplace.com?" What criteria, exactly, is OsamaKBOT using to send things to speedydeletion? Our concern is that your bot will not be able to recognize allowable, but rarer/more-idiosyncratic forms of source citations, and that that will lead to sourced images being unnecessarily deleted. --Dynaflow babble 14:56, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Do not worry about how my bot finds unsourced images. Worry about bot's mistakes (I say that for 5th time ;)). anyway my bot finds any image's dicrapsion has (URLs, "source", "from" or other..) if there skipes if there is no list then taqqing with {{subst:nsd}}.. That's it! --OsamaK 19:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
OsamaK, please read what people have written above. Find the alternative that has been suggested and tell us what it is and why it is preferable to tagging with {{subst:nsd}}. Then you might have a very small chance of getting your bot approved. Carcharoth 23:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The bot's demonstrated errors are only one of three problems. Second, even if the bot were foolproof it steps on the toes of our new proposal on use rationales, a much more serious effort to deal with noncompliant images. We can't have everybody running their own independent bot giving out deletion tags that conflict with ours. Third and finally, even assuming good faith, based on recent history we cannot rely on this editor to run a bot properly, within approved guidelines, communicating quickly and responsively to people who point out errors or otherwise question what he is doing. His ongoing approach to dealing with our questions only drives this third point home. I think we've been gently (and not so gently) suggesting that he give it up. I'm not sure what else we need to do. As far as I'm concerned the bot's rejection means this matter is closed, and I'm watching the bot approval pages to make sure it isn't opened again. Wikidemo 23:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Carcharoth, What's the "very small chance of getting your bot approved."?--OsamaK 09:37, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
To be honest, I largely agree with Wikidemo. Given the history, it is very unlikely that your bot will ever be approved without drastic changes. I apologise if I raised your hopes. One thing though, I'm puzzled by this edit. I think you've inserted some text into Wikidemo's reply by mistake. Carcharoth 11:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh! sorry for this edit :). People here talk without examples for wrong tagging. My bot can be fixed if I understand what the problem is (with examples ;)).--OsamaK 14:33, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Then..--OsamaK 20:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi there! I'll ask BAG again as no one opposes this bot. ok?--OsamaK 12:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Please don't. As far as I can tell, everybody opposes this bot and has said so, above.Wikidemo 12:12, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Why? BAG can't believe opposites with no reason, any problem I'll fix them, let me know what's the peoblem(s) is..--OsamaK 13:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
If you review this discussion the answer is in there. The opposition to you running the bot again rests on things you cannot fix. Wikidemo 14:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Can you visit this page ,please?--OsamaK 19:10, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I'll not wait MR.Wikidemo for long time, if you have a really problem let me know!--OsamaK 10:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't know what you're talking about. I have let you know in very clear terms that your bot is a bad idea and that I oppose it. Wikidemo 10:41, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Do you have another good idea for tagging all these images which are with no source? it's bad, why? I can't understand! ST47 says your because your English is bad (that's funny reason!).--OsamaK 04:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
The point is, from what I can tell, that it's better not to tag images at all than to tag images with a fundamentally flawed approach. 17Drew 04:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Why not? there is very large log for images need tagging (then.. maybe deleted). that's Wikipedia's policy--OsamaK 05:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Because identifying the source of an image inherently requires a person to do. 17Drew 05:36, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Did you see my bot's test? it was nice, look at this bot too..--OsamaK 10:14, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

STBotI

OsamaK has a point there. User:STBotI does seem to be tagging images for lack of sources. I've dropped a note off on the bot operator's talk page and asked them to clarify here what is going on. It is entirely possible that he is using AWB and human oversight, as opposed to unsupervised automated bot editing. Carcharoth 10:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I've checked STBotI's edit history, and I think it's necessary but problematic. Whether manual or automated it is suffering from the same errors as OsamaKBOT. For example, see Image:LeRay Toffing.jpg, tagged as "no source" despite having the statement "Author Unknown, Harvard Photo Archive, circa 1915" - a source! However, we don't have the other two concerns I raised with OsamaKBOT, an unwise purpose or a person who has proven unreliable in his running of bots. Regarding purpose, STBotI is filtering images as soon as they are uploaded for lack of use rationale, lack of source, and other problems, and generally notifies people of the error the same day they make the upload. Because it's so fast there is very little disruption and no chance of stepping on our new proposal to clean up old images - at most there is a very mild WP:BITE issue. In fact, I would go so far to say that SBotI is doing a great job and a wonderful, invaluable service. If it weren't operating we would have another 100+ bad images per day added to our stockpile. I really, really don't want to encourage anyone to run bots without authorization. If that's the case, let's ask ST47 to go ahead and ask for approval, and be ready to endorse the bot so people won't feel like they have to run bots on the sly (if not, sorry for any implied accusation).
The errors in bot recognition of sources point to the need for an explicit "source=" field so it's as plain as day to human and bot whether someone has added a source or not. That's part of our new proposal, so going forward for new images it won't be a problem once the proposal gets implemented.
Speaking of bad images, could someone with administrative privileges please summarily delete this one? We don't really need yet another copyvio picture of the pope with amateurish swastikas photoshopped on his robe :( Let us know what CSD criterion this fits. Wikidemo 14:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Yeah I don't know about the CSD criteria, but I deleted it anyways. Somehow I don't think this one is going to end up at WP:DRV... Calliopejen1 14:45, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
As I already complained at User talk:ST47 this bot has made mistakes with my own images and with the sourcing of other's images, and it seems to have a rather narrow conception of what a source looks like. Dragons flight 17:37, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
As I explained on my talk page the bot checks for watch words "my", "self", "from", "source", or any link, or tags, such as ".*self" and ".*user.*". This should be more than sufficient to catch any valid source, however I can revise these rules. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs 18:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
But that doesn't even come close to catching all possible source notes like "Photograph of Greek statue of Hercules at the NY Museum of Art", "Scan of CD cover art for Raging Librarians", "Cover of Discover Magazine - March 15, 1997", etc. To say nothing of the fact that you missed my {attribution}, citing a Wikipedian as copyright holder, as unsourced. The variety of things that can be used as source descriptions defies your bot's simple logic. And since this task is not approved for your bot, I would ask that would stop it and discuss it at the bot approvals page. Dragons flight 18:25, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
My bot has less problems it doesn't check free licenses, covers or screenshots. -2% has wrong tag as the test!- it works like ST47's bot (But I'm not in BAG like him!).. anyway 2% is very low for bot which is in test time.--OsamaK 22:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
ST47, I ran across this approval for the bot to check for copyright tag and to guess about the presence of a fur (based on 25+ words in the description, I assume with special allowance for the generally approved templates). But I see no approval for tagging images for lack of source. If the bot has been approved could you point to that? If not, I would support approval. Re. Dragons Flight, I see the problem but now that we know how the bot works, why not simply include a statement "source=" rather than make the bot play guessing games? As long as the bot only goes through new images soon after upload, that's not too much to ask. In fact, maybe we should make it a requirement to include the magic word "source", as a better alternative to hand labor and errors in finding whether there's a source listed or not. Wikidemo 23:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Bots should behave in a way that never (or rarely ever) surprises normal users that are following our normal expectations. Telling a user that their image has "no source" even when the written description would satisy a human as to what the source is, would be surprising. The logic described so far is, in my opinion, too rudimentary to adequately do the intended job. If a "source" field were part of the upload form, I could understand having a check complain if that were left blank. However, at present "sourcing" is basically free-form, and I do think it is too much to ask for everyone to manually format their descriptions in specific ways to meet the limited capabilities of a bot. One of the reasons we have an approval process is to have trial edits. If we went through 50-100 edits of just the "no source" function, then I do believe the error rate would be unreasonably high at present just looking at my experience and some of the other complaints it has drawn. Dragons flight 00:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree about the need for bot tests and approval. However, we are going in the direction of requiring sourcing and other information to conform to some stricter format guidelines. Overall that will take a lot less effort, not more, than typing out everything freeform. For the moment, I think that having each of the 2,000+ image uploaders per day type "source=" or "==Source==" seems a lot faster a and better use of people's time than having volunteers read through each of those 2,000 images looking for the source, or having errors from the bots. Moreover, putting this and all data fields in a consistent format means they'll be a lot more useful down the road. Wikidemo 00:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
You forget, the least amount of effort is to have no requirments and check nothing.  ;-) However, if we are want the upload description to have parts, it really ought to be done be adding parts to the upload form. That said, some months back, I explicitly suggested adding a "source" field to the upload form and the developers rejected the idea as being too Wikipedia specific to warrant including in Mediawiki. (Which is a whole seperate rant since a project our size ought to have software tailored to our needs, rather than allowing ourselves to be constrained by the needs of small third party Mediawiki users.) Dragons flight 00:57, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I had a problem with the bot myself; images tagged with a source and a license still got tagged for no source and or copyright. I talked it over with the botowner on IRC and on my talk page, but I am still just slightly annoyed by it. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 00:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, bots, Image tagging, and deletion have collectively raised everybody's blood pressure a lot. Hopefully we're all coming to a group understanding about a better and more efficient way to do it, and getting some more accurate and less intrusive tools and procedures. If they won't automatically add it, we can still use templates and maybe some kind of wizard like thing to get everybody on board. Wikidemo 02:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Another example of the bot malfunctioning: [4] - someone was complaining about this at WP:MCQ. Calliopejen1 20:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for informing me. I've corrected this. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs 20:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Heh, are you kidding O ST47? your bot makes more mistakes. It should blocked! Stop it please (2% -maybe more?- is very high as what did you say at the IRC)--OsamaK 20:53, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Why does wikipedia allow the non-attribution of copyrighted works ?
  • Even the license templates say "To the uploader: please add a detailed fair use rationale for each use, as described on Wikipedia:Image description page, as well as the source of the work and copyright information."
  • Take a look through Category:Film poster images, you will see almost no image there has a phrase such as "Copyrighted by Universal".
  • This is the only required feature by law, nowhere does it say in US law that you need a fair-use rationale. Stop arguing over the rationales missing the title of the article, this is a minor problem. If Jimbo is likely to land in jail, it's not going to be for a rationale missing an article name. There is absolutely 0 requirement by law for this. However not attributing the author of a Copyrighted work is illegal, even under Fair Use claim. Almost all other sites apart from blogs, even though they are much less strict than wikipedia, have a little line under the photo saying "Copyright XXX". And yet here there is systematically no attribution. And if you look through the backlog of pages tagged for missing an article name in the rationale, you will see that most in fact have no copyright information either. Sometimes there is a line like "Copyrighted by the film/music company", that is not sufficient and totally redundant anyway, as there is already a great big template above saying it is copyrighted. We need the actual name of the company, group, organisation.
  • When the template says the source of the work and copyright information, do people really think it means write some bogus line like "Copyrighted by whomever made this image" ? Of course not, if it were that simple it would say it in the template already.
  • Instead of spending time arguing with bot owners about tagging of pages with non-standard rationales, try to fix the real problem.
  • How can I tag pages such as Image:Forbidden quest.jpg ? (Using an image I uploaded so as not to offend anyone in particular). Should I tag as a copyright infringement ? Or as missing rationale ? I can't see anything in Twinkle that really applies to this case. Maybe I should use the IfD process ? (please don't say db-self, I am asking as an example :P) Jackaranga 11:10, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
For the example you gave I'd say just put "Copyright by CJ Entertainment" (asuming the distributor created the poster) somewhere on the image page. But yeah we can defenently get a lot better at stating who the copyright holder is, a lot of people (om either side of the non-free issue) seems to think that source = URL, for example some people would tag a logo that says "Microsofts logo, copyrighted by Microsoft" as having no source because there was no URL on the page... In generaly people seem to add the bare minimum of information on uploads. I think' I did a fairly good job on this image Image:Straxus robot mode.png I uploaded a few years back (although in retrospect it doesn't explicitly say that Marvel hold the copyright (though it's implied by saying it was reprinted with theyr permission). --Sherool (talk) 14:11, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Copyright notices are not a legal requirement, either for the copyright holder or any fair use re-user. We do ask for sourcing information, and we're working on affixing copyright ownership information to older images ona remedial basis. For the film poster example, it's clear in nearly all cases who owns the copyright - the studio. Nothing bogus there and no problem worth getting worked up over; going forward we can be more explicit about exactly what information we expect from the image uploader. Wikidemo 14:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Well nobody seems to know what deletion template I should use for Fair use images that fail criterion 10a) because they are lacking specific copyright attribution, (neither here or on administrator noticeboard), so I guess I will have to use the IfD process. Jackaranga 21:09, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think you should be deleting these kinds of images. The source is obvious, reproduceable, and makes no difference. One gets movie posters from the distributor, directly or indirectly. Copyrights are owned by them or someone in the distribution chain or, in a few rare cases, the artist who made the poster - either the copyright notice is on the image, or if it isn't there's no way anyone here will ever find out.Wikidemo 21:47, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I would prefer to attempt to fix them, but there are so many that are missing it, and nobody seems to want to help (understandably) , I can never do all on my own, so it's better if I apply WP:NFC#Enforcement, it will at least get a few. Well I tagged a few yesterday anyway, I will wait and see if they get deleted before doing more. Jackaranga 08:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change to the WP:NFC#10

Introduction:

Policy excerpts

The image or media description page contains the following:

(a) Attribution of the source of the material, and of the copyright holder if different from the source.

It is important that you list the author of the image (especially if different from the source), which is important both for copyright and for informational purposes. Some copyright licenses require that the original author receive credit for their work. Examples:

Author: The British Broadcasting Corporation ...

Proposed change (in red)
10 Image description page. The image or media description page contains the following:

10 (a) Attribution of the source of the material, and of the copyright holder if different from the source. See: Wikipedia:Citing sources#Images.
10 (b) A copyright tag that indicates which Wikipedia policy provision is claimed to permit the use. For a list of image copyright tags see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags/Non-free content.
10 (c) The name of each article in which fair use is claimed for the item, and a separate fair use rationale for each use of the item, as explained at Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline. The rationale is presented in clear, plain language, and is relevant to each use.
  • to

10 Image description page. The image or media description page contains the following:

10 (a) A copyright tag that indicates which Wikipedia policy provision is claimed to permit the use. For a list of image copyright tags see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags/Non-free content.
  • And unless dictated by common sense
10(b) Attribution of the source of the material, and of the copyright holder if different from the source. See: Wikipedia:Citing sources#Images.
10 (c) The name of each article in which fair use is claimed for the item, and a separate fair use rationale for each use of the item, as explained at Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline. The rationale is presented in clear, plain language, and is relevant to each use.


Benefits

Only added six words
Human readers still get as much information
deletion bots are now rendered useless because they can't estimate if something is dictated by common sense, but can still be used for blatant violations such as lack of license tag, a role IMO more appropriate for a bot
the NFC policy becomes more coherent with the spirit of the wikipedia policies, which are meant to be used by humans, (read WP:BURO)
I feel WP:BURO is a more general policy, defining the spirit behind other policies, and WP:NFC should make an effort to be in compliance, and should be written in such a way as to leave a place for common sense
Applying WP:NFC as it is currently would lead to the deletion of nearly all album covers and movie posters, as well as almost all other Fair Use images, this is in contradiction with WP:Ignore all rules, I don't believe this policy should be used thousands of times a day, as it is currently every time someone looks at almost any fair use image. If Ignore all rules were meant to be used all the time like that, other policies would not have been written. Instead of hiding behind this policy all the time, lets change WP:NFC.

Jackaranga 09:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Comments

Comment - Thanks to Jackaranga for his interest in the problem of noncompliant images, but another proposal on the subject has recently gained nearly universal consensus (see heading earlier on this page, and Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria/Proposal ). Jackaranga's proposal conflicts with the earlier one, so I do not think we should approve it. The earlier proposal follows what I believe is a strong consensus that all images need source information and use rationales, but calls for templates that greatly simplify the process of uploading and using images, tagging noncompliant images by bot, and fixing tagged images. Although film posters are not in our initial batch of templates to develop (those are logos, book covers, album covers, and 2D and 3D artwork), it would be a logical next step to propose something for film posters once we get the initial ones in place. The target date is January 1, 2008. In the meanwhile I don't think the deletion issue is as bad as Jackaranga suspects. Those doing the large-scale tagging and deletion efforts have agreed informally to direct their efforts to new images uploaded after January 1, 2007 for the time being, so the "legacy" images uploaded before then are getting a reprieve until we can figure out what to do. The current round of large-scale deletions began sometime in June or July, and since then they have vigilantly challenged new images uploaded without sources and use rationales. So we only have a five month window, from January to May of this year, where there are a lot of noncompliant images in immediate danger of deletion. That's a lot of images, but nowhere near 90%. I don't think we should move to a "common sense" test on whether sources are needed or not. Of course common sense should be applied to all rules, but we need more guidance than that. The simplest approach, which i think has wide consensus, is to require people to say what they know about where they got an image and who owns the copyright, at the time they do the uploading. There's strong consensus for continuing to require use rationales every time an image is used, and film posters are no exception. But we will be making the process easier. Wikidemo 10:02, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Question about fair use images on the main page

I read somewhere on Wikipedia that fair use images can be used on the main page for Today's Featured Article. However, after several searches around Wikipedia's fair use guidelines, I can't seem to find that bit of stipulation. Now, people on the request block for Today's Featured Article are opposing and bitching about articles that are being requested because "They don't have a free use image to use." Now, I know I saw this stipulation somewhere. Whether it's outdated or has been removed, I don't know. Could someone help me on this? Helltopay27 22:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe it's outdated, and nonfree images are no longer used on the main page. That may be why you are unable to locate the exception you once saw. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:20, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Jurassic Park screenshots

I would appreciate the opinions of other users on whether this screenshot Image:JPvelociraptor.png from the Jurassic Park film is fair use in anything other than the Jurassic Park articles. I am pretty sure it isn't, as otherwise we could use any depiction of anything in the article of that thing which I am pretty sure would send Wikipedia the wrong side of fair use law. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 11:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe there is no such rule that states a movie screenshot can only be used in an article about the film. In Velociraptor the image is used to describe the Velociraptor in the film so I believe it is OK, as no free replacement of a Velociraptor in Jurassic Park could be found.
However there are several problems:
  1. The image has no source or copyright holder info (i will tag it for deletion in a sec) (criterion 10a)
  2. It is used in some articles without a rationale
  3. A discussion about a dinosaur in a film may not be appropriate for a "scientific" or paleontology article, but I don't know about that and it's debatable, and is also a produce of the popularisation of wikipedia (ie more and more fancruft, and minor details from films and cartoons being spread across articles that many would consider unrelated).
As to your particular concern though I believe from a Fair Use Point of view the image can be used in articles about the dinosaur as long as they discuss the dinosaur in the film. For another example see Image:Playboy 0603.jpg You may not see the relation at a first glance but it is in fact exactly the same because it's a case of the fair use image being used in an article about the subject depicted in the image. Jackaranga 12:40, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe the use of that magazine cover is fair use as it is not vital to the article to display it and could one could perfectly well explain that that person appearing on the cover of a magazine without using a copyrighted image. If we allow the depiction of a dinosaur in Jurassic Park film to be used in this article then it is going to open the floodgates to thousands of depictions of people, creatures, commercial items, brandnames, places, buildings to be used in articles which I believe will put a big stretch on the claim that Wikipedia is the free content encyclopedia. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 16:23, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately it's kind of too late as far as opening the floodgates goes :P. You may be right, I don't know, criterion 8 is very subjective, and one can wonder for example if having a picture of an album cover in an article about the album that does not mention the cover even once, satisfies this criterion. Jackaranga 16:46, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
There is no such rule which states that a screenshot of a film must only be used in the film's accompanying article, only that a Fair Use image can be used if its presence would increase readers' understanding of the topic. Detailed Fair Use rationales were provided for uses in both Velociraptor and Deinonychus months ago. Please do not remove FU rationales (Gustav), and please do not tag images for deletion which have both detailed Fair Use rationales and which have clear source information ("from Jurassic Park" is the source) (Jackaranga). Firsfron of Ronchester 04:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Doesn't "if its presence would increase readers' understanding of the topic" mean of Jurassic Park and not any article that contains something in the picture? This is just a license for proliferation of dubious fair use. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 15:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
No please re-read WP:NFC#10a. "Attribution of the source of the material, and of the copyright holder if different from the source". Is "Jurassic Park" the copyright holder for itself ? No, a film can't be a copyright holder, only a person, an organisation, or a government may be. Jackaranga 09:42, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I am familiar with the policy. You tagged the image for deletion with {{di-no source}}, which stated the article had no source information, which is not correct. Now you are stating the image should have been deleted because the copyright holder wasn't provided. However, the licensing tag states "This image is a screenshot from a copyrighted film, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by the studio which produced the film." Tagging an image for deletion with a false tag isn't helpful. Removing detailed fair use rationales isn't helpful. I didn't upload this image, but I think the willful destruction of someone else's work is pretty awful, and telling someone to "re-read" the policy when you yourself didn't even use the correct tag is beyond the pale. Please avoid copyright paranoia. The image clearly falls into the WP:NFC#Acceptable_images category: "Film and television screen shots [used] for critical commentary and discussion of the cinema and television."; the image is accompanied by several paragraphs of critical commentary of the animal's depiction in the film. Finally, I will note that the article is a Featured Article, representing what the Wikipedia community (or a stringent portion of it) believes is the best work on Wikipedia, and there were no reservations about this image when it became a Featured Article. Since you also left a note on my talk page reminding me to re-read the policy, I'm cross-posting this to your talk page as well. Firsfron of Ronchester 16:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe what Jackaranga was after was what I've put at Image:JPvelociraptor.png#Source. This was already obvious from the summary, which said the source was the film "Jurassic Park". I would point out to Jackaranga that copyright ownership can change over the years, so the requirement should be to give the copyright details at the time of uploading, not the present details. Carcharoth 16:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey, you are making me say loads of things I didn't ! :p I agree that it's only fair to require the copyright as it was at the time of uploading, never said otherwise, I didn't delete any rationales from that image, I believe its use is valid, and is consistent with other cases. The only problem was it didn't say the name of the copyright holder. I believe {{di-no source}} is the template to use because the user notice that goes with it ({{Di-no source-notice}} says:
I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright.
Like I said though I asked here and as you can see my question was archived without any answer being given. I will ask again maybe I will get more luck this time. As for the copyright holder being obvious, I think the policy should be changed so that the copyright holder does not have to be stated if it is obvious (see above), however the current main proposal goes against this, as does the current policy. Note it says: and of the copyright holder if different from the source and not if different from that of the source. For example Image:Boeing-Logo.svg could be deleted by a bot for not saying ©Boeing. Jackaranga 21:03, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
How would the bot know that Boeing is what is required here? And bots don't delete (normally). Humans do. That image requires a human to assess it. Bots are limited in what they can realistically achieve. Carcharoth 12:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Too true, that's one of the reasons I disagree with the new proposal, I don't think the wikimedia resolution meant that people had to go as far as making each element of the rationale machine-readable. Perhaps it will be for the best though in the end. Jackaranga 16:59, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
"I don't think the wikimedia resolution meant that people had to go as far as making each element of the rationale machine-readable." Uh, what? That has nothing to do with the proposal. And if you disagree about an image being deleted because the copyright holder is not attributed, then make another proposal, because that, again, has nothing to do with the current proposal (the proposal does not even touch that part of NFCC, that is). -- Ned Scott 04:29, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Just like we go farther than the law requires, we may go farther than the Foundation requires in order to keep things orderly. It's a good idea to make things machine readable. Nobody is proposing that the actual source / copyright info be made machine readable, thought that's probably a good idea. Just about any content site other than Wikipedia has encoded this stuff and isn't just relying on freeform text. We're in the dark ages there. But what is proposed, and I think is part of the proposal, is that the source information (if present) be put in a specific place so that computers (and human editors) know where to find it. There's nothing deep or complicated about that, a simple parameter in a template that can someday be automated as part of the image upload wizards: "source=" or "owner=". What to do about images with no source information is a different issue than whether the source is required and, if so, what format to use. Overall the proposal is to streamline things and make them easier, not harder. Wikidemo 01:14, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Critical commentary

I always have new editors, some old, coming to me asking "what do you mean by critical commentary?", when I tell them that their non-free image does not meet WP:FU. Upon reviewing the guideline, which has changed a bit over time, I realized that "critical commentary" is used six times, and not one time do we actually explain what we mean by "critical commentary". I really think this guideline would benefit if there was an good explaination as to what "critical commentary" refers to for certain non-free images. Otherwise, it just because the same tireless debate over "well, I mentioned it, so that's critical commentary, right?" Even I have to admit that sometimes I'm unsure about the appropriate commentary for an image. Sometimes the image may be encyclopedic, but the right words might not come to any one editor's mind to establish why that image is necessary.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 03:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I would also like to hear some independent input about critical commentary. For example, at Sunshine (2007 film), I understand that the picture of Cillian Murphy in the spacesuit is an example of illustrating the critical commentary about the costume design for the film. What about characters and their interactions, though? At the same film article under the Cast section is an image showing a group of space travelers to illustrate the critical commentary about the casting selection, even if the screenshot is not explicitly tied into that commentary. Is it possible to provide any non-free images in a straightforward character-driven drama where the actors pretty much look like themselves? —Erik (talk • contrib) - 03:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I for one think all references should be changed from "critical commentary" to "commentary", which everyone would understand. Here's why. The term "critical commentary" is borrowed from the jurisprudence over fair use, which in turn derives from the US copyright law (15 USC 107), which provides that fair use is for "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research" (emphasis added). When lawyers write about the issue, and occasionally in judicial opinions, they say "critical commentary" as a shorthand for criticism or commentary. There isn't the implication that "critical" modifies "commentary", and in fact there is very little discussion of what kind of criticism or commentary suffices. Criticism is used in the sense of critical analysis, what a critic does, not in the narrow sense of merely opining whether something is good or bad. That has little place on Wikipedia - criticism is mostly original research and new theories, whereas we merely report on what other people say. That leaves commentary, which is talking about something. It really boils down to the question, are we including the copyrighted work for purposes of talking about the work, or talking about something connected with the work (e.g. its history, owner, creator, subject matter, significance to society)? If so, that's commentary. If the work is merely there to look pretty, to help navigate around the page, etc., that's not commentary. And if it's there to comment about a wholly unrelated subject, it doesn't count. I personally think we shouldn't attempt to define "criticism" or "commentary" here, but instead leave it be as a borrowed legal concept, because redefining it here would be creating an unnecessary Wikipedia-only fork off of fair use law. Wikidemo 11:35, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I think that sounds like a good idea. We may determine that we want to set a fairly high bar for what exactly constitutes "commentary", but that can be sorted out after we come to a consensus that we should use more clear language. (ESkog)(Talk) 12:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
If think changing it to "commentary" is going to open the door to galleries of images that simply have "this image has blank on it", because that would be simple commentary on the image.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 13:11, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
There's already an explicit prohibition on galleries. "Critical commentary" appears six times in the guideline (WP:NONFREE) but only in the examples on acceptable fair use. I think you'd have to look at each application separately and see if we want to set a higher or more explicit bar than merely "commentary." If we do set a higher bar I don't think "critical" is going to be the word of choice. We could say "significant" commentary, or "non-trivial" commentary, or "commentary relevant to the image" or something like that. Keep in mind that whatever language we use, in each case the image use is always subject to the ten WP:NFCC criteria.Wikidemo 14:19, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I think that we are more concerned with terms than we are with explaination of those terms. You cannot use subjective terms like "significant", "critical", etc etc and not explain by what scale you are measure the "significance" and "criticalness" of the commentary that should accompany those images. Saying, "it should be non-trivial" is the same thing. People will just go "well, that's non-trivial". It's all subjective, and we should have some general definition, with maybe some examples to point to in each of the non-free image categories, so that people can gain an understanding of what it means to say "significant commentary", "critical commentary", or whatever terminology you like.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 14:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, we don't have to define all of the terminology. Applying a definition can make the policy or guideline rules too rigid, unable to deal with unforeseen applications, and can create a fork off the common use of the word to the point where it becomes a term of art in Wikipeda. As much as possible we should use common terms for their plain meaning, and let people bring their understanding of the terms to the table. "Trivial" is a perfect example of that. We wouldn't want to pin it down too closely. Triviality depends so much on the specific context.Wikidemo 14:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Applying a strict definition can make them rigid, but giving some actual meaning to the words does not. Otherwise, you open yourself up to constant fights over images (which we have right now). Playing the "I want to be everyone's friend" game with terms only creates more problems. There doesn't need to be a "it's this way or no way definition", but there certainly needs to be some actual explaination with examples. If you want to go the "use the general definition of the word", then spell that out in the guideline. The whole point is that the vagueness of this guideline in response to defining what is and is not acceptable is what causes a lot of the problems and conflicts we have regarding non-free images.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 16:14, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Album covers in band articles, yet again

I have for some time been gradually trying to ensure that fair-use album cover images are not used in band articles. I last brought it here in August; here is the relevant archive. There was another relevant discussion here more recently.

My stance is (briefly) that using album covers in band articles is not good fair use (it contradicts the boilerplate text in the fair use license) and in many cases may also discourage people from uploading free images, where that is possible.

While wary of the danger of instruction creep, it might be worth having a specific clause in the policy that makes it clear that this sort of thing is not valid fair use. Wiggle-room could be left for truly exceptional cases, but I am concerned that each of these (what seem to me like) consensuses exists in isolation and there is not really a central point we can refer to on this, thus leading to the argument having to be refought for every single band article. Alternatively, it may be that I am wrong and that there is a project-wide consensus that this is, or may sometimes be, a valid fair use, although it is hard for me to see that. The same issues apply to book covers used in authors' articles, and maybe elsewhere too.

Here is the most recent manifestation of this lack of clarity. Your comments would be welcome, there or (preferably) here. --John 20:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe the NFC policy permits use of non-free album covers in band articles if the album in question is significantly discussed in the band article. The best case for this would be an article about a band with only one album, where there is no separate article about the album. -- But|seriously|folks  20:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I could see that as being a viable exception to what I believe to be the correct interpretation of our current policy. The boilerplate text I mentioned above currently reads, in part, "solely to illustrate the audio recording in question". It seems clear that this allows its use on the article about the album, less clear that it allows its use on band articles. I would fall back on Minimal number of uses. As few non-free content uses as possible are included in each article and in Wikipedia as a whole. Multiple items are not used if one will suffice; one is used only if necessary. At present we have "An album cover as part of a discography" as an example of unacceptable fair use; we would only have to refine that example slightly to make it clear that there are also problems with using fair use images willy-nilly to decorate articles like this. --John 21:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Album covers are a significant part of the brand image created by most professional bands and, obviously, a central element of their marketing. They thus provide valuable information—irreplacable by text alone or by free images—for articles on virtually all professional popular music acts. As for how many such images should be called upon to serve this significant purpose, that clearly varies from band to band, from article to article. To have a sweeping policy clause that their appearance in band articles is not valid fair use is (a) not supported legally and (b) does not best serve Wikipedia's mission. We can promote the use of free images and the judicious use of fair-use images without restricting the latter in a way that unnecesarily undermines the quality of the encyclopedia.—DCGeist 21:03, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

The key word, as DCGeist says, is 'judicious'. Ultimately each instance needs to be judged on its own merits. If an album is discussed significantly in a band article, there may well be fair use grounds for including the album cover - though in most cases 'significant discussion' of an album should be in its own article, where use of the album cover is perfectly reasonable. I expect John's main concern - and I'd agree with it - is where album covers are used in band infoboxes or distributed throughout the aricle to pretty it up without any real justification in terms of discussion of the relevant albums. Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer to see more liberal use of such images to enhance the appearance of articles, however fair use has been abused and will continue to be abused if we don't encourage clear justification for each instance of a cover's use. Cheers, Ian Rose 01:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I thought of a one hit wonder from my youth and there was an article on John Fred and his only significant album, Judy in Disguise (With Glasses). The use of album cover in this article on the band seems acceptable. It is only use once. There is no need to move it to the stub on the album. The same could apply to a book cover in an article about the author with only one major book. -- SWTPC6800 01:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Maybe a suggestion could be that by default fair use images like album and book covers should only appear once on Wikipedia, and that any exceptions would be argued on a case-by-case basis. The fair use rationale on the image should really take care of this and state categorically why its use on each article is essential, to comply with "As few non-free content uses as possible are included in each article". At the moment there is still an expectation among some that by default every album cover is acceptable on every band article. I have been gradually challenging this and I think it is starting to shift to a more encyclopedic and discriminating approach more in line with our stance on limiting fair use. I would not be averse to one or two fair use images on band articles, where they are particularly "iconic" or where the cover image itself is discussed in the text; but that leads us to some difficult case-by-case arguments. We need a coherent discussion to balance the needs of our articles to conform to our own core values with the value on any one article of any one image. I was going to make a hypothetical suggestion that we could include Image:TheClashLondonCallingalbumcover.jpg on The Clash article; then I looked at the file and saw that it is was (I sorted it out!) used 16 times! And this is the problem. As a beginning to solving this, I'd like to adjust the wording of the policy to make it clear that such use is not automatically permitted, and then try to thrash out some ideas of what good practice would look like. --John 03:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Just to be clear: right now, our policy (Wikipedia:Fair_use#Acceptable_images) states that if there is critical commentary on an item--say, an album of popular music--an illustration of that item's cover art for the purpose of identification of the item is acceptable fair use. The policy does not restrict where that critical commentary appears--it might be in an article specifically on that item or in an article covering that item and several others (e.g., because they were all produced by the same musical act or because they are all important examples of the same musical genre); it might appear in the primary running text or it might appear in the caption. And the policy requires neither that the cover art itself be iconic nor that the critical commentary directly address the cover art.
Now, you've said you'd "like to adjust the wording of the policy"--obviously to make it more restrictive. Exactly what new sort of language do you have in mind? And why do you believe it is necessary to change the language in order to "thrash out some ideas of what good practice would look like"? Can't we establish a best-practice guideline without changing policy language?—DCGeist 03:35, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Either way would work, really. We need to make it clearer that album cover images in articles are not an automatic entitlement; we need to better and more clearly and transparently balance "Cover art: Cover art from various items, for identification only in the context of critical commentary of that item (not for identification without critical commentary)." (from Wikipedia:Fair_use#Acceptable_images) with "Minimal number of uses. As few non-free content uses as possible are included in each article and in Wikipedia as a whole. Multiple items are not used if one will suffice; one is used only if necessary." As to wording, a few extra words alongside the existing mention of discographies as an unsuitable venue for album covers. I'll try to draft up something suitable once I have thought about it some more. --John 04:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
This doesn't have so much to do with the policy as it does with the issue itself. Using a cover is good to identify the work, but what is usually most helpful is a sample of a song or two from the album, in the context of discussion of how the album sounds. That's what I did with, for example, the Gwen Stefani article. 17Drew 09:03, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
And, usually, a 20-30 second clip will work. It also has to be in OGG. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 09:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
You are all overlooking the most important fact, which is that a large majority of album covers and film posters, have no copyright information, (even though it is the only actual information required by law, rationales being simply a wikipedia policy). The template tags and this page clearly say there should be copyright information. There is so much copyright infringement on wikipedia anyway, and a lack of will to delete 1000s upon 1000s of images at a time that there really is not much that can be done. If we take into consideration the lack of copyright info, I think we would have to delete more than half the images on wikipedia. Just look through Category:Album covers and Category:Film poster images, most don't have a line such as "© xxx Record Company". I think it is a case of don't ask don't tell unfortunately. Jackaranga 09:48, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Properly identifying the copyright holders of copyrighted material is indeed very important, but the participants in this discussion have not been "overlooking" that fact--it's simply not pertinent to the specific topic being debated in this thread.—DCGeist 09:52, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
That's true sorry. Jackaranga 09:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
You also raised this in another thread on this page, and were told that you were overstating the case. Maybe you should reply up there before repeating this down here? Carcharoth 10:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
To be specific: "Copyright notices are not a legal requirement, either for the copyright holder or any fair use re-user." - in other words, we need to say who owns the image (what we call "source"), but we don't need to explicitly put a copyright notice on the image, though in fact we do. We have a generic "copyright" tag, and then a separate "source" bit. Carcharoth 10:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I hope that in time you may forgive me. Jackaranga 11:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Only time will tell. ;) My contribution to this (and John is already aware of my position) is that, in accordance with the various laws applicable and the Wikipedia policy, it's actually ok to post all album covers (yes, all) on the artist's page in addition to the album article. It's not, however, appropriate to do this as we prefer (not, do not require, but prefer) context based inclusions only on the Wikiguidelines. In many cases, every album cover may be appropriate to add. In some, many may be. In some, yeah, none would be suitable to add. It's based on commonsense as to the quality that the image (or sound file, since someone tangented to that) provides to the page. There is no copyright or fair use law in the world that would prohibit use of every album cover by an artist being listed on the artist page and on the album page. We do choose not to do it because it's inappropriate, but it's certainly not illegal, and definitely within Wikipolicy, despite extracts from the policy that lead one to believe it's a questionable practice. --lincalinca 12:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggested amendment

"The use of non-free media in lists, galleries, discographies, and navigational and user-interface elements usually fails the test for significance (criterion #8), and if it fails this test such use is unacceptable.

Here are other images that if non-free would almost certainly not satisfy the policy.

1. An album cover as part of a discography, as per the above. Album covers in band articles, and book covers in author pages, are not automatically good fair use. Additional fair use of this kind would have to be justified by a special rationale on the image page showing the unique contribution the image makes to every article in which its use is proposed." ...

Suggested amendment (2)

"The use of non-free media in lists, galleries, discographies, and navigational and user-interface elements usually fails the test for significance (criterion #8), and if it fails this test such use is unacceptable.

Here are other images that if non-free would almost certainly not satisfy the policy.

1. An album cover as part of a discography, as per the above. Album covers in band articles, and book covers in author pages, are not automatically good fair use. A separate and specific rationale must be provided on the image page for every particular use of a given fair-use image showing the unique contribution the image makes to every article in which its use is proposed." ...

Discussion

I've drafted something which seems to balance our wish to use these images occasionally under special circumstances with the principle of minimizing the use of nonfree images which the project has adopted. It is not perfect I am sure, but I think it would be better than the current situation. --John 07:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

A book cover should be allowed in an author article to identify a significant book. No special discussion of the cover design or such is required. The cover can be used for identification. If an author wrote 10 books there is no need to have 10 covers. -- SWTPC6800 15:32, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Why? Seeing the cover won't help you explain why the book was significant, and if there is any significant comment on the book itself it generaly belongs in the article about the book itself, not the author's article. --Sherool (talk) 15:56, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Identification of significant works is a fundamental and valuable purpose served by illustration. Significant comment--even if only a sentence or two--about an author's significant books or a band's signficant albums most definitely has a place in author/band articles.
As for the proposed change, I would trim the additional language in order to focus on the essential point: emphasizing what is already policy—a separate and specific rationale must be provided for every particular use of a given fair-use image.—DCGeist 20:56, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, I have amended my proposal with that in mind. If we went for something like that we would still probably need to thrash out here just what is and isn't good fair use in this area, as such a wide range of views have been expressed. Exemplars of good fair use in articles, anybody? --John 04:18, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
The revised language looks good to me. Unquestionably, when a Wikipedia editor adds a fair-use image to an article, he or she needs to think about what purpose it will serve there--your proposed revision should help encourage that.—DCGeist 04:41, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
As for an examplar, I really like the choice of two album covers that appears in Bob Dylan. The first is for Blonde on Blonde, the album most often cited as Dylan's greatest--a clear candidate for identification as particularly significant. The second is for "Love and Theft", the album most often cited as the best of Dylan's most recent...good lord...three decades (I don't like it much, but the critical consensus seems to regard it as his best since Blood on the Tracks). And, more than that, the substantive content of the cover is very similar to that of Blonde on Blonde: Dylan's face. In a very effective way, we can see how the man has changed over forty years...and has not. Despite his fame and prolific output, Dylan's album art has rarely been regarded as particularly notable, so the restrained use here strikes me as appropriate. The one cover image that does strike me as iconic in of itself, that of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in fact does not appear. I think it could well, but you'd want a sourced sentence or at least a sourced phrase on it to explain its appearance.—DCGeist 08:43, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
The statement that certain uses of album covers are not automatically fair use has nothing to do with the example it's attached to, that they're not permitted in discographies. It also goes without saying, because nearly everything is in that category. That's the default, that a separate rationale must be provided. The limitation on the album cover example is already reinforced by the "cover art" example of acceptable use farther down the page, where it says it is only for identification of the item. Another problem is that your proposal misstates the rule. "Specific" is problematic and ambiguous over the question of whether the rationale has to be different in each case. For album covers used for band articles and book covers in article pages, that's not really true. Each is evaluated on its own merits, but specificity has nothing to do with it. Moreover, "unique contribution" is not the standard for inclusion. The standard is whatever it says in Criterion #8 ("if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding") as affected by the other criteria (e.g. #3, minimal use, #1, replaceability). I wouldn't encourage rewriting the proposal to try to match the rules. Though a noble ambition, I think it's a hopeless and boundless task to call out specific contexts where the rules have to be applied and repeat a statement or interpretation of the rules. Most people know this already and the few who don't will be reminded when they try to add inappropriate album covers to artist articles. Something like this might fit somewhere in the music projects as a guideline for how to write music articles, though. Just be sure to state the policy and guideline correctly. Wikidemo 09:22, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Somebody please help me decode this discussion on album cover images. After all of the back and forth, above, I am not certain exactly where the discussion ended up: are we or are we not allowed to use an album cover image on an album's page? If we are allowed, then what fair use criterion should we cite? BTW, I did "get" that we need to provide a copyright citation (and credit if known). Thanks. Christopher Rath 00:26, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Non-free text

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry, but there is a slow motion edit war at [5] over whether quotes used in user space violate the guidelines for non-free content.

As silly as it seems, the anon does appear to be correct that the terms of WP:NFCC, as presently written, do seem to exclude the use of non-free text (i.e. quotes) outside of article space. Dragons flight 21:13, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you asking if you can have quotes in your user space? I personally wouldn't think there would be a problem, unless you have like an entire script verbatim on your user page. But quoting Virginia Wolf is hardly a copyright violation.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 21:22, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
It is fair use, absolutely, but the non-free content criteria are stricter than fair use. Specifically, NFCC #9: "Non-free content is allowed only in articles ...". Though the policy was intended for images, quotes also qualify as "non-free content". Hence the problem. Dragons flight 21:25, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
It's an uncharted area; some serious discussion will be needed to resolve it. I would suggest posting this at the Village Pump, which is more heavily watched. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
That's a really good point, actually. So should we permit it, because it's kind of silly to prohibit it, or should we continue to apply a higher standard to non-article space, stay true to our non-free mandate and prohibit it? (Obviously, pre-1923 quotes are permitted.) -- But|seriously|folks  21:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
A potentially bigger issue than what you put on your user page is that if the prohibition is interpreted literally then you would also be prohibited from quoting outside sources in talk page discussions. I think we obviously need an exception of some sort here. Dragons flight 21:39, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Unless the quote is trademarked, I'm not seeing how it would be non-free to begin with. If it was something someone said, then it most likely isn't copyrighted...as people didn't really copyright their personal quotes. To put, "He who has overcome his fears will truly be free." and attribute it to Aristotle wouldn't be a copyvio, as his personal words are not trademarked (ignoring the obviousness that Aristotle was well before 1923). If you're quoting the text of a book, that's one thing, but quoting a person is something else.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 21:47, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Nowadays, once the expression of an idea is fixed in tangible form, copyright is automatic (no notice or registration is required). The particular examples cited above may or may not be protected, but I'm sure we can come up with reasonable examples of quotes that are problematic. I am also fairly confident that Kat wasn't quoting based on spoken conversation with these individuals, and hence the quotes almost certainly were written down by someone. Dragons flight 21:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I say we shouldn't worry about it. As long as people aren't copying large sections of works to their user pages, the ability to quote works in discussions is more important than enforcing our non-free content policies to the letter. --Carnildo 22:55, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I would agree with Carnildo. It's not as though she had a whole sonnet on display. And I believe that Kat's commitment to copyright policy is second to none, while her understanding of it is certainly superior to mine, and I suspect, superior to that of many Wikipedians. ElinorD (talk) 23:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
And still her actions are inconsistent with the text of the policy. Which says to me it is time to tweak the policy to reflect what we actually do. Dragons flight 00:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Second the laugh or cry question. I'd say ignore it, and/or change the policy to have an exception for quoted text. Seems silly to have to write it in, but people love legalism... - cohesion 00:17, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
For now, I've changed non-free content in the criteria to mean images and media files, which is what the policy is written around. Quotations and other text uses really don't fit the current rubrik. They don't have description pages or fair use rationales. In practice, quotes appear in many namespaces and there certainly is no expectation that every quote be coverted to a paraphrase to promote "minimal use". Looking over the critera, it feels most natural to me to simple say that these rules are a description of how we handle media files. Dragons flight 02:05, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
You're right, sort of, but I think that's a little rash. Quotations are definitely non-free copyrighted material, and they are definitely subject to our policy. Most of the policy does apply - sourcing is necessary, use only if there is no free equivalent, use to minimal extent possible, it must significantly improve encyclopedic function of the article, it must not diminish the commercial value of the original, etc., etc. You bet those issues do come up when quoting text. That is why we don't have song lyrics here, or full poems, or recipes, or chapters from books. There are just a few things that work differently. If we want to carve out an exception for people to use very short quotations on their user page, fine. Make that an exception. But we don't want people quoting entire poems on their user page. Wikidemo 02:46, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
That distinction - quotes are OK, poems not - is why I think a broader discussion is needed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
As mentioned above, it's not just user pages but all non-article space quotes (i.e. including talk pages) that should be considered. In practice, I'd say we also look at free equivalents and minimal use differently. Quotes are often used for reasons I would consider purely a matter of editorial discretion, when a paraphrase would have the same encyclopedic effect, and yet there is no rush to insist on paraphrasing everything. As above, the de facto policy is that no rationales are required, etc, etc. I understand that there has to be a limit (e.g. your book chapters), and fair use doesn't apply indefinitely. However, I would also contend that as written NFCC can't apply to text because its requirements are largely nonsensical if you try to apply them that way. Dragons flight 03:05, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
P.S. I did try to think of a more limited change that would in effect say "quotes good", "book chapters bad", but in trying to do so, I came to the conclusion that trying to work text into the NFCC in a sensible and comprehensive way would generally be a very large change because the NFCC framework was not designed for it. If you have a better suggestion, please offer it. Dragons flight 03:10, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
This policy historically has only been for media. I think for text we have usually just relied on the, "All text is GFDL" (except when it isn't) line of thinking. Sure there is fair use of text all over, but other than style guidelines, I really don't think much policy speaks to it very directly. I'm not sure we need any to though either, I don't think there is a problem with overquoting. - cohesion 00:53, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, WP:NFCC and WP:NONFREE in particulare are not well adapted for text. The best approach would be to have a separate section, probably a guideline page for text. In the meanwhile we shouldn't eliminate all references to text because that would leave non-free text uncovered by any policy. I agree that we don't have a big over-quoting problem, but text copyright violations do pop up from time to time and there are isolated incidents of questionable or overextensive fair use text. For example, in some of the sci fi and fantasy world realms, the canonical texts are often quoted extensively, e.g. Tolkein poems and fictitious sagas. On the other side of the coin, I don't see any big deletion wars or hurt feelings like we have with images. So perhaps there's just no rush either way. If the issue is a much more narrow one, that somebody is objecting to short quotations in the user space and we need to clarify that they're okay (or decide they aren't) maybe we should just deal with that directly.Wikidemo 01:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) Don't we have it upsidedown here? WP:NFC is our Exemption Doctrine Policy. If we remove text from its scope, then isn't all copied text prohibited via WP:C? I think we need to formulate a text component for WP:NFC. -- But|seriously|folks  01:40, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:54, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
If we need an EDP for quotes, then the Foundation resolution presents much larger problems, such as: "Non-free content used under an EDP must be identified in a machine-readable format so that it can be easily identified by users of the site as well as re-users". Anyone want to start a quote tagging crusade? Dragons flight 02:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the Foundation Resolution, it seems narrowmindedly focused on media. I wonder if that was intentional or an oversight? Is it possible they intend it only to apply to media? And if so, what is our mandate with respect to non-free text? -- But|seriously|folks  02:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I've sent a note to foundation-l to confirm what I consider to be the obvious assumption that the Foundation is not anti-quoting. Dragons flight 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Good. After they've answered that, ask them where we should draw the line . . . -- But|seriously|folks  04:00, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Been here before it seems ;) --luke 06:12, 25 October 2007 (UTC) // p.s. Just to clarify what I meant to imply: Why should "non-free" quotations or other non-free text be treated any differently from "non-free" images or audio? Is there any logical reason for the distinction in terms of e.g. Erik Moeller's conception of "freedom" ? TIA - luke
I for one am glad I don't have to come up with an answer to that question. My inability to reconcile these positions makes me wonder whether this stricter-than-fair-use-under-the-law non-free content policy might be a little wacky. -- But|seriously|folks  07:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

An album cover as part of a discography

It says under the 'Unacceptable images' section that 'An album cover as part of a discography' is not allowed. However, it is my understanding in accordance with WP:FUC, if a band's article does not have separate articles for each respective album, then it is not a fair-use violation to have those album covers under the band's discography. This 'content guideline' contradicts the official policy of WP:FUC. Is anyone opposed to rewording the sentence to read 'An album cover as part of a discography, which has separate articles for the respective albums' or something similar? Please offer input. Thank you. —Christopher Mann McKaytalk 20:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree, they are rather contradictory, and I feel a re-write by a user who is more knowledgable of this part of Wikipedia is in order. — jacĸrм (talk) 20:09, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
No, what it is saying is that you cannot have a gallery of images. The images are supported by WP:FU on their separate pages because they have more than just a title written next to them. The entire article is about that one album, whereas a discography is nothing but a gallery of images and the album titles. That is what does not meet WP:FU.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 21:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Non-free images must be significantly discussed and enhance the reader's understanding of the article. Photo discogs are not permitted because they do not include a significant discussion of the images and are therefore decorative. IMHO, if an article about a recording artist has a subsection that discusses one of the artist's releases in detail, and there is no separate article about that release, the cover of the release can be used. But others favor a stricter interpretation than I. -- But|seriously|folks  21:31, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
After a lot of hand-wringing, writhing, and harsh language, the people who were hanging out on this page in the April to July timeframe all reached a consensus....maybe more of a cease fire....that the requirement for minimal use WP:NFCC#3 and significance WP:NFCC#8 would be interpreted to mean that images could not be used for galleries and discographies (see the sentence just under the "Unacceptable images" heading in the guideline). It's a done deal, and many, many discographies were quickly edited to get rid of all the images - it would be a major project to put them back even if the consensus had changed. On the other hand it is okay to include a single image of the album in the album article. It is not always right to put an album image in the band article, just in special cases. One of those special cases is that if the band article has meaningful discussion of specific albums, or of the album cover art as it relates to the band, you can include an image here or there, maybe up to a handful of images if each adds significantly to the article. A single album mentioned in a band article, or a series of prose sections, some with images and some without, is not a discography. A table with just data and no prose, and columns for release date, soundscan number, chart rank, album name, and the album cover, is obviously a discography. There is a line somewhere in between. Any time you have two possibilities there is always a line somewhere in between. There is no contradiction at all. It is a consensus interpretation of the policy. Wikidemo 18:29, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
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