User talk:Colin/Archive/2018

Thanks, I never even thought of that second point you made. I'll fix it when I get back to my puter with Lightroom. PumpkinSky talk 13:28, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

You must be an orator. Thanks for all your contributions to Commons. Wikicology (talk) 14:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Or a Pastor too --The Photographer 14:52, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

It is sad that you miss the difference between projects like DMOZ and Commons. In short, DMOZ is about the Web, whereas Commons is about images uploaded to Commons.

World Wide Web is decentralized. The unit of classification in DMOZ is one site (usually http://some domain example/). The unit of consumption is one page. It would be pointless for any directory service to aspire to track pages due to the way WWW is arranged; even for purposes other than directories the rate of link rot is awful. And a directory of sites is too coarse to be really useful for finding pages.

Now, what is a unit of classification on Commons? And what is a unit of consumption? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:59, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I do appreciate they are not the same. All analogies are imperfect: the key is to appreciate the point of the analogy rather than pick holes in it. There are reasons DMOZ failed (compared to just using Google) similar to the reasons Commons category system is junk. Sure, we don't get link-rot, but we also have a lot of content that really isn't worth finding. It is just too much hard work and most of the effort seems to be involved in making images harder to find. Many images on Commons are awful and deeply nested categories makes wading through that awfulness a dispiriting experience. I do appreciate that some people like doing pointless tasks as a hobby, but once those pointless tasks start fights and arguments (which is where this discussion started), one really must question why on earth one does it. -- Colin (talk) 16:11, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry we have a disagreement over the PumpkinSky situation, and I'd like to offer a small truce. I apologize about hatting your boldface headings; I guess Commons doesn't have the same rules on "incivility" that en.wiki does, so please know my intent was merely to tame down the situation; I was involved in the Grace Sherwood issue and the subsequent CCI, which was being mischaracterized here. I had forgotten about the mentoring thing until you reminded me -- back in 2012, the issue I was addressing was a concern about close paraphrasing and I was reviewing his work for that, which I did for several months... and the truth is that PumpkinSky didn't edit on en.wiki much after that from about 2013 until maybe last summer or thereabouts (probably got a little more active on en.wiki about the time he started putting forward the featured picture candidates here). So, I really wish you'd strike that "you failed" comment at the discussion. I was mentoring his writing, I wasn't his babysitter. If he is socking now, well, he's a grownup and I have no dog in that fight. Plus, I like your ravens and you gave me good feedback on some of my photos. Montanabw (talk) 21:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Montanabw thanks for the apology. And I apologise for the "failed" comment on your mentorship. I had conflated the sockpuppeting misbehaviour with the ignorance of plagiarism failings, and if you were only mentoring his writing, that's unfair of me. I'll fix that shortly. As I noted, I find it strange both you and Olive Oil offer entirely defensive comments at the VP and remain silent on the cheating. As such, your comments had a polarising effect, rather than drawing us towards mutual understanding. And I simply don't agree that his creation of PumpkinSky was a declared alternative account of Rlevse (though the declaration was later added as part of his unblock). I mentioned I was active on Wikipedia then. I knew Sandy Georgia, Graham and Awadewit at Featured Articles and was very aware how hurt everyone was when he started the "Wehwalt for FA director" campaign and was discovered to be Rlevse pretending to be a newbie. Also thought his attacks on Bencherlite were terrible. It is during this phase that the HalfGig account was created, and I suspect was done as a means to continue to participate at FAC without the toxic reputation that PumpkinSky had developed.

You know, it wasn't easy with that history to be civil to PumpkinSky at FPC. But I offered him advice and help as I have to many others, and as I have received myself. I'm a critical reviewer and not afraid to oppose. I could see him improving and he made an effort to get out and photograph regularly, and also to invest in some rather expensive equipment. So like every one else at FP I am hurt to discover he's been cheating since August last year. Some of his review comments I read on Sunday, as I fixed the >90 nominations, were painful to read. I can't get my head round how someone can decide to deceive and spin lies to one's wiki colleagues in order to gain a couple more gold stars.

We clearly have different experiences of Rlevse/PumpkinSky on Wikipedia. I don't know why he did a RTV after Grace Sherwood. It seems an over reaction and would have been entirely possible to come back with a declared account. But he chose to pretend to be a newbie and return to the same areas of conflict. I think sockpuppetry is one of the worst things you can do on a wiki. It's like having an affair. You deceive your friends for selfish reasons. You might think this was a "gray area" wrt policy, but I don't see it as grey morally. Unless there are privacy or personal safety issues, I don't think there is any excuse for deception. So my views on this are why I would like to keep the "Consistently deceiving the community since 2011" text. There are some people on Commons who think Featured Pictures is a side show and so perhaps they think if someone cheats there it is no big deal. Already we see some questioning the indef block or saying he's welcome back. From my point of view, I think therefore it is important to highlight that Rlevse/PumkinSky/HalfGig has been dishonest with us all for many years.

I would be happy to "agree to disagree" with you on this matter. Thanks for your comment about the ravens. They are a most unexpected success, and let's be honest, just pure luck. See you around. -- Colin (talk) 22:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

No harm, no foul. As for my opinion of the current situation, [1]. (smile). Also, to me a sock problem that is upsetting is something like this. Montanabw (talk) 00:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Colin. Check your email—you've got mail! You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{YGM}} template.

/FPCBot (talk) 13:05, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Colin,

I've noticed this a bit late, but I'm not sure why you pinged me in this comment. What did I do wrong? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 16:31, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

User:Juliancolton, it was your comment and action here. Very similar misjudgement by a 'crat wrt INC led to this ability being removed from all 'crats. I think Rlevse's adminship was gained on very slim grounds (7 votes and hardly any participation at the time), his retiral on WP was due to self-admitted copyright ignorance, which was what his adminship on Commons was claimed to be about. And rather than return as Rlevse he chose to deceive the community and pretend to be a newbie in order to remove the baggage his old account had accumulated. Same as with INC/Daphne. The comment that there was no "local controversy" is I think a wrongthinking attitude by some on Commons, that somehow we should put blinkers on and only consider a person's behaviour on Commons rather than on the Wikimedia projects. -- Colin (talk) 19:01, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh... in that case, I don't necessarily disagree with you. That was quite a few years ago and my views have surely evolved a bit regarding adminship since then. I'd completely forgotten I had anything to do with it, to be completely honest. Thank you for explaining and I regret to see that my confidence was misplaced. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 23:56, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

/FPCBot (talk) 05:05, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:23, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Colin, my neighborhood lost power yesterday and I am not done with monthly maintenance of the photo challenge. Could you finish it for me. Only counting December votes is left. Thanks --Jarekt (talk) 16:51, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Jarekt, sure. Do you mean January? I see December is counted and awarded. -- Colin (talk)

yes--Jarekt (talk) 16:57, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

/FPCBot (talk) 05:03, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Dear Colin,

I recently received a camera in excellent condition, however, the lens is stained by something (maybe oil). I spent a day trying to clean it using hot water, alchool and continuous polishing, however, the result is not totally clean.

My specific question is, what could I do to clean this lens?. Thanks --The Photographer 12:55, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

User:The Photographer, to be honest, I have no idea. Is there a photo club you could take it to? Perhaps you can get hold of another that perhaps has a bad body but good lens, and salvage something from both? Maybe one of my talk page lurkers have an idea. Is there anyone on FP using film cameras? -- Colin (talk) 13:29, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Buy another camera like this to get the good lens is difficult because it's a common problem on yashica mat and i need to be in person to check the lens. Let me put it on FP talk page to see. --The Photographer 13:36, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

This looks at least partly like fungus which has destroyed either the cement (probably en:Canada balsam) between lenses or the coating or both. Not fixable, I'm afraid. --Smial (talk) 13:54, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I think User:Smial is correct, if so, changing the lens with similar camera is only the option. -- Biswarup Ganguly (talk) 15:20, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Smial and Biswarup Ganguly, I think try using gasoline to clean it --The Photographer 16:21, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

@The Photographer: you could ask at the Photography SE forum. Some people there will probably give you good advice. – b_jonas 23:48, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

That is a beautiful picture of something prosaic. Thank you. --GRuban (talk) 15:51, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

GRuban thanks George. It was fun to make it too. -- Colin (talk) 08:04, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Dear Colin, I know that you hate QIC, however, i did this plugin thinking in you especially because I'm sure that you will love the new way to vote. I could do something similar on FPC. Please, if you have time, you could help me to test it. A hug. --The Photographer 23:21, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

User:The Photographer, I'll look into it later and let you know. Biggest issue with current QIC is the UI, definitely. -- Colin (talk) 08:05, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, in my last featured picture candidates you ask me about number of frames, rows, columns, software used. There is a template or rule as well to describe it. Is there an example? Greetings, Tournasol7 (talk) 14:55, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Tournasol7, the {{Panorama}} has some parameters for number of frames and software used, though not for greater detail like rows, columns or if HDR frames required, etc. You can also use the {{Photo Information}} template, though when I look at some of my own photos, this template seems to be broken at the moment. I've also sometimes just listed these details in the description. -- Colin (talk) 16:55, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Tournasol7 (talk) 17:13, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

/FPCBot (talk) 05:01, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Colin, I run into some issues with the Voting and CreateVoting codes. Both of them return "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Photo_challenge/2018_-_May_-_Architectural_iron/Voting&action=raw gave Unable to connect to the remote server. No wikitext" error. Any idea what have happen? Strangely, AutoWikiBrouwser stopped working about a week ago too, while all other things work fine. Colin Do the codes still work for you, ir is it my laptop that has issues? --Jarekt (talk) 03:29, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Jarekt I'll have a look at it tonight. The above URL works ok in my browser, but perhaps the client code in the apps is doing something different. -- Colin (talk) 07:04, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Jarekt, sorry I totally forgot about this. I'll set myself a reminder for tonight. -- Colin (talk) 10:38, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

I actually managed to reinstall the Visual Studio on a different laptop and got it to work again. It is weird that my old laptop can no longer run AutoWikiBrouwser and your codes. I created voting pages last might and I can finish with scoring the votes. However I might need help next month as I will the traveling end of July beginning of August. Any chance you can fill in then? --Jarekt (talk) 11:50, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Sure, Jarekt, no problem. Glad you got it fixed. Send me a reminder later this month, as you'll have noticed my memory isn't great :-) -- Colin (talk) 11:54, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

I've never nominated one of my photos at FP but i'm considering this File:Blacklick Woods-Blacklick Creek 3.jpg. I've always really respected your photography and wondered if you could give me your opinion of it? All the best, -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 02:58, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Sixflashphoto, Always good to start with a look at the relevant FP collection (e.g. Commons:Featured pictures/Places/Natural) to see how it measures up against the rest. What is needed for FP is an image to make you go "wow", whether a great subject, great light or great technical achievement. I think this image is very nice but may struggle to convince enough people it has sufficient wow. There's always a gamble in nominating, and these things are subjective, so you never really know. What might have elevated this photo is a boat or animal in the water to provide a clear subject for the eye, or some other feature. Compare File:St James's Park Lake – East from the Blue Bridge - 2012-10-06.jpg which has some London landmarks. For scenes with water and/or foliage it may be worth buying a polarising filter (Hoya are a good make and a fair price). I see a little noise in the bottom right where the water is out-of-focus. Take care not to sharpen areas that are out-of-focus or are sky. You can use a local adjustment brush to paint a negative sharpening amount equal to the global amount, which cancels it out. -- Colin (talk) 21:43, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

That is such great advice, in particularly your example photo to illustrate your points. I may have much more trouble (except a bird or an animal, that does occasionally happen) finding an extra point of interest in central Ohio but I will continue to try. I do already use local adjustment brushes but usually very minimally to add sharpness to a face or a specific point of interest. I should attempt to be more liberal with it in the future. A 77mm polarizer for this new lens if on my list but with a new camera system I have several things on that list. Thank you for taking a look at it; even a comment such as "very nice" I appreciate coming from you. I'll continue to try, shoot more and get better. One day one of my shots will be good enough for a FP and when I finally achieve it I want it to be because it deserves it. It will make it immeasurably more satisfying. Thank you again, -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 22:24, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Sixflashphoto, yes at 77mm, a CPL gets more expensive and if you only use occasionally then that's not a priority. I got the tip about negative brushes from "The Digital Negative" book by Jeff Schewe. Participating as a reviewer at FPC is helpful I've found, to make you think about what makes a great picture and what sort of things don't work. Is there a particular subject you are interested in, or just keen to try many things? I don't know how much experience you have, but I've found Michael Freeman's books to be very good for any level of photographer. You could try "The Photographer's Eye". -- Colin (talk) 07:28, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I mainly shoot landscapes and with that wildlife that is often nearby. I shoot architecture as well but usually as illustrations for Wikipedia articles. I don’t do a lot of portraiture or sports. Occasionally I’ll break out the light stands and try doing studio but with nice weather like this I don’t spend a lot of time in a studio setting. As to experience I’d say never professional but over a decade of being a committed amateur and more than a year of getting out 4+ times a week shooting. I found myself not using my 72mm CPL on my previous go to lens so I haven’t thought of it as high of a priority as I possibly should. With needing new memory cards, new spare batteries and the like my migration from DX to FX is as expensive as I anticipated haha. I look around FP and occasionally give I’ll my opinion. I’ve heard good things about Michael Freeman's books, I should look into them. A lot of the photography books I've used just are old thick Kodak books just on the technical aspects of photography, short on composition, strong on diagrams and graphs. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 12:06, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

4x a week? -- well you are a lot more active than me. I look at the Sony FE system as it seems the logical next step, but it is eye-wateringly expensive to replace the variety of lenses I have. -- Colin (talk) 12:10, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

It's how I exercise. As I keep getting older I keep needing to exercise more. I can't stand gyms and a piece of personal gym equipment other then weights just seems like a waist of money to me. Photography gets me out, I've always enjoyed hiking and I've always enjoyed nature. Sony makes beautiful equipment but I've used Nikon equipment since I was a child. I don't have a huge glass collection for the F mount but I suppose I'm just used to it. The A7 line is beautiful though. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 12:20, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Exercise equipment? Is that what you told the wife when you dropped $2000 on your new D750 and 24-120 lens :-) Think of the savings on gym membership! -- Colin (talk) 12:26, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

That had me lol. The beauty of being single is your only have to lie to yourself. :) -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 12:28, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

"COM:IDENT discourages this as it is often ineffective"

You changed the wording of this part of your response, but assuming this is still your view: the image COM:IDENT was referring to was File:Childhood Obesity.JPG. This image had been public for over half a year before her face was distorted. On the talk page discussion of COM:IDENT you said "The original unpixelated image is on the internet and by dragging & dropping the pixelated version onto Google Image Search it is trivial to locate it. This highlights the need to ensure privacy concerns are dealt with at upload time rather than applying a sticking plaster later. The internet never forgets".

Actually, it does, if nobody cares. When you search for it now, you will find dozens of websites using the pixelated version. There appears to be only one left that isn't censored. And it's not entirely trivial to find it, you have closely look at dozens of pixelated versions to find it. And if that one disappears, there will be no easy way to find it again. When such blurring or other ways of concealment are applied quickly, within a few days, it certainly can be effective. I do agree however it's much better to take care of this at upload time.

Your other point "e.g. look at the thumbnail -- if you knew this child, you'd recognise her" is not really the biggest concern. The point of blurring etc is to make sure that people who don't know her (well) won't recognize her. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 21:45, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

I've replied at the DR. Once again I'm frustrated that you make POINTy edits during a DR, and show disrespect towards content creators. This isn't your photo. Show some respect. -- Colin (talk) 22:31, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello.
I admit that crapped out here, but you had not to indent your posting in a way which suggested a reply to my posting. Appearance of a talk-page stalker can be confusing per se, and more so when the structure of thread becomes distorted. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:45, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Incnis Mrsi, I was replying to your posting, specifically your comment about who edited first. Also I wasn't a "talk-page stalker" -- if you see in the section above, I created the "Username visually identical" section with reference to the AN/U page, which you ignored when you created a new section dealing with the same issue. Your restoration of some of your text continues to confuse matters. It was me who claimed to have unified/usurped Colin 10 years ago, not the de-wp guy. The de-wp guy hasn't edited here since 3 July. I think from your tone and mistakes that you are getting a bit frustrated about an issue that doesn't concern you. I appreciate you are trying to help, but I think you need to calm down a bit and be more careful if you are going to help. I will admit that it did not occur to me that my post on the other guy's page, with my standard signature, would be confusing. I've fixed that. -- Colin (talk) 17:47, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Definitely I at first ignored your thread created c. four minutes before mine. Do you blame me for that and simultaneously advice to butt out, seriously so? My postings on contentious topics sometimes are edited and previewed for considerably longer, and the action=edit&section=new form doesn’t provide a notice of concurrent activity. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:04, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi there. I was wondering if I could get your input on how I format my image files. Usually, I just open the RAW files in Photoshop, click the "save" button and get some options on which format I want. I just focused on saving them as JPGs with the highest quality possible. Now that you mention it, though, I do see that there is a box ticked with setting the colour profile to Adobe RGB (1998) - this was pre-checked and I've never really thought about it. But as I understand your input, there is an advantage to using a different one? I looked in PS and found that if I use the "export" function rather than "save", I do get more choices, among which is: Colour space - "convert to sRGB". I take it this is the preferred option, then?

As a side note, is there also a preferred file format for the high quality photos? Personally, I can't really see any negligible difference between a PNG and a high-quality JPG, but which do you think is the ideal choice? --Peulle (talk) 11:29, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

User:Peulle, I'm using the latest Photoshop CC, which I get along with my Lightroom Classic CC subscription, which I think is good value. I usually use Lightroom for everything, only needing Photoshop for some stuff. When you say you opened the raw file in Photoshop, when I open Photoshop and use File/Open to open a raw file, it pops up the Camera Raw dialog. This dialog is similar to Lightroom but without all the digital asset management (DAM) and book/printing modules. I can then process the raw file and click "Save Image...". If I do that I get a huge dialog with one section being "Color Space" which I can change to sRGB. I can also create presets for different kinds of options I might want. If instead I click "Open Image" then it opens the raw file in Photoshop. However, before you leave CameraRaw look down the bottom of the dialog. There may be a line of text like "Adobe RGB (1998); 6000 by 4000 (20.0MP); 300 ppi". Click on this and you get another dialog. Change the Color Space to sRGB. You may want to save a new workflow preset. It seems that once you change that, ACR will now default to sRGB for future files.

Raw files don't have a colour space (well, they contain an embedded JPG thumb which does have a colour space, but that JPG isn't used by Photoshop) so it only gets one when it has been through a raw converter like Lightroom or ACR. Photoshop deals mainly with files that (should) have a colour space & profile and maintains that setting unless you convert or assign another one. If you open up the Edit/Color Settings dialog, you may see a working space for RGB images. Pick sRGB. For the Color Management Policies, pick "Preserve Embedded Profiles" for all. And for the profile mismatches and missing profiles, it is helpful to tick all those boxes so you get warned. Now when you use the Save dialog on Photoshop, it should have pre-ticked "ICC Profile: sRGB".

In terms of Photoshop quality level, I recommend 11. I've seen a careful analysis of the levels and there is no perceptible difference between 11 and 12 yet 12 creates a much much bigger file. The equivalent setting in Lightroom is 90.

For photographs for Commons I recommend JPG. It is a lossy format but suited for photos. If you used it for graphics and textual images then the lossy drawbacks come out -- high contrast edges get softened and when you magnify you see little gnats flying around. So PNG is for graphic art. Both PNG and TIFF can be used to save photos and are not lossy at all, but will result in much bigger file sizes. Their main use is for saving an intermediate file you will work with in Photoshop and perhaps combine with other files to create a final image you save as a JPG. The main use for those on Commons where the image is a photo or a scan is when someone is restoring a document or historical photo and wants to preserve their work lossessly. But it is typical to also upload the JPG for use on Wikipedia.

You can use the Save dialog on Photoshop (it always saves a copy for JPGs) or you can use the Export dialog. With the former, ensure the "ICC Profile: sRGB" blue text is ticked. With the latter, make sure you tick the "Embed color profile" option. I think it is easier just to use Save. But overall, it is much much easier to just use Lightroom. There's even a plug-in for Lightroom that lets you edit all the fields you need for Commons and handles the upload to Commons. Lightroom also lets you geolocate your images if they don't already have that. -- Colin (talk) 12:42, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, I have noticed the "Adobe RGB (1998); 8 bits; 4928 x 3264 (16,1 MP); 300 ppi" line in the past, just never paid any attention to it. Clicking that gives me a lot of options, including "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" (as well as e-sRGB" further down but I take it that's not the correct one). Not sure whether changing from 8-bit to 16-bit means anything, but changing that workflow thing does indeed seem to be set to sRGB every time I open a new RAW file now, so I guess that means my future uploads will be like that. Thanks. :) --Peulle (talk) 13:13, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Peulle recommend changing to 16 bit also. I assume you do most of your adjustments in ACR (which is usually the best place) and then just use Photoshop to save the file as a JPG. But if you did any further manipulation in Photoshop, it would be best to work with a 16-bit image than 8-bit. When it is finally saved to JPG, it is just 8-bit, but keeping it 16-bit while you are working on it is very beneficial. The only reason to not do that would be if your computer didn't have enough ram to comfortably edit a 16-bit photo. -- Colin (talk) 16:16, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

OK, I'll do that too. I usually do it the way you described; when open in PS the only additional work I do is perspective correction or cropping. :)--Peulle (talk) 20:38, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I think you missed this edit. Jcb (talk) 10:06, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

User:Jcb I see that now. Yann responded to you. The text in the policy has been there since 2014 (per this discussion). I don't think "Notify the blocked user, preferably using a user block template." would have been written if the automatic information provided by the UI was considered sufficient. I think you need to respond to Yann's reply and to confirm you will use a block notification on the user's talk page in future. IMO you need to improve your engagement level when being discussed at AN/U. All too often I seen an inadequate or no response and they you appear to ignore the discussion, waiting for it to die out. This pisses people off. If you provide the appropriate response, meeting community expectations, then the whole discussion ends in a good way and it makes you look like a constructive collaborator. Currently, it just looks like you are (understandably) defensive but (unacceptably) argumentative and restiveness to changing. It would also be helpful to respond more fully to the issues raised concerning your DR closures. I don't think you've got much community-patience left for you just to continue as you are. -- Colin (talk) 10:21, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Over the years I have adjusted my actions a lot. I have always been responsive to questions at my user talk page. Responding more than necessary to an AN/U topic like this leads to an explosion of reactions by a certain category of users, I think you are well aware of that. I follow the discussion, but I also do what I can to minimize the waste of time it causes for the community as a whole. I think my message to Yann was explicit enough in the context of this abusive AN/U topic. Jcb (talk) 10:31, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Jcb You asked Yann several questions and made it clear you thought adding a template was "IMHO not adding anything", arguing the system message was sufficient. That to me suggests you are not yet prepared to add the template and are unconvinced. What's missing now is a statement where you acknowledge Yann's response, the previous community discussions, and explicitly agree to following the practice that your fellow admins/community think is necessary. You need to ignore the bad aspects of the AN/U and recognise there are good users/admins reading it and seeing genuine problems with your admin actions. If you choose to ignore the discussion, you just give fuel to those who say you think you are above the community, and I can only repeat that I am out of patience with this. You might think "that's an angry stupid mob i can ignore" but you can't and the angry stupid mob will keep wasting our time with long and longer lists of "how bad Jcb is" each time you make any mistake. It isn't good enough to claim "Over the years I have adjusted my actions a lot." -- you have to explicitly acknowledge when you agree to change. Perhaps you think we all monitor and see what you are up to and have some visibility of changes you make. We don't. The only time most people see what you are up to is when you engage on a file that matters to them or when you turn up at AN/U. -- Colin (talk) 10:44, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:29, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:13, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Your uploads of Mount Stuart House are nice, but please do not violate COM:OVERCAT. Category:Listed buildings in Scotland is not for photos, but for more specified categories. --A.Savin 08:51, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

A.Savin, I am using the WLM upload from map interface. This automatically adds the category. It also, because I clicked on a known listed building, added the {{Listed building Scotland}} template with that ID. I also added the Category:Mount Stuart House which in turn is classed as a listed building in Scotland with known IDs. It seems that whoever developed the upload pages should not be adding Category:Listed buildings in Scotland when there is a known ID. Perhaps you should speak to them. There were 14,000 files uploaded by 471 people in WLM UK last year, so that's a lot of people for you to personally ask to not violate OVERCAT. I will try to remember to remove the category but I am reluctant to fiddle with "listed" or "wlm" categories at all during the competition, in case the image disappears from the competition. I also have an aversion to doing edits that can be done by a bot, and removing the Category:Listed buildings in Scotland is easily automated since my image is already in the category via two other means. A script that looked for the template {{Listed building Scotland}} and Category:Listed buildings in Scotland in any page would do the job (though getting the upload wizard fixed would also be good). Similar for England, Wales, Northern Ireland, etc. -- Colin (talk) 11:12, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

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/FPCBot (talk) 21:02, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

/FPCBot (talk) 21:02, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Colin, I will be camping and off line for a week Oct 2-9. I can prepare next month challenge, but will need help processing past challenges. Do you think you can help? --Jarekt (talk) 18:02, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Jarekt no problem. I'm a bit busy tonight trying to finish off a few WLM photos for the deadline, but should be able to help tomorrow evening. Have a good holiday! -- Colin (talk) 18:24, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks --Jarekt (talk) 03:23, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:24, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

--QICbot (talk) 05:27, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments at Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Ceiling mosaic in the Surrogate's Courthouse (32325)a.jpg (also pinging C messier and Ikan Kekek.

I've uploaded a new version (old version, new version).

The question of how much post-processing is acceptable and/or what is "realistic" seems like a question about which people have wildly varied opinions. Should an image strive for what it would look like in ideal conditions, or is it necessary to try to wait for (or arrange for) those ideal conditions for a similar result? The issue here wasn't that the light happened to be bad that day. The light from outside doesn't do much at all for that mosaic other than cast a bit of a blue glow to the lower parts of the ceiling (and most strongly on the side opposite what's in this photo). If this mosaic were spiffed up, shown under bright lights, and photographed up close, it would probably look great. At what point is it ~"cheating" to try to aim for that with post-processing? It's unclear to me at what point that becomes different from if I got permission to simply remove a chunk of the ceiling to clean it, move it to where lighting is more favorable, and then put it back before doing more restrained post-processing for a similar result. :/ If it were always pitch black in that room, would no photo that uses post-processing to actually render the mosaic visible be realistic? — Rhododendrites ^talk |  04:05, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

My feeling is that falsifying the appearance of something you saw, so that it doesn't look like what you actually saw, is normally a bad thing. I will say that the revised photo looks better than the original, but I think that the thing that kept me from supporting the original wasn't that it required more light, but that it could have been sharper. I think that the duller light tends to accentuate any fuzziness from less than crisp sharpness. I'll be curious to read Colin's thoughts. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:34, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

What about a flash, then? Or bringing light stands/reflectors? or using a shallow depth of field? (when I look at an object, what's behind it isn't in focus, but it doesn't turn into blur like a <f2.0 creates). What winds up in the camera certainly isn't what you're seeing before hitting the shutter in all of these instances. My feeling is that if it couldn't look a certain way, then yes, it's bad, but if it could look good in a particular way, I don't see a problem with using post-processing to accomplish that. When I look at the mosaic, I can see a spectacular, colorful scene, even if I'm also seeing that the light is terrible (i.e. it's clear that if conditions were different, it would be great). — Rhododendrites ^talk |  04:44, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I think I agree with you both but the difficulty is that our eye doesn't work like a JPG. Wrt focus, I think actually the object behind really is blurred, and in fact only a tiny central portion of our vision is sharp, but when you want to concentrate your vision on the object behind, you move your eye and shift focus, and so it is really hard to get the same effect as a still image where the focus doesn't follow your eye. A photo is quite a unique form of art that has this focus-blurring effect. It is also unique in being able to freeze motion or blur motion. We accept these forms of photography so don't feel deceived.

Our eye also adjusts to the colour temperature of the lighting, the brightness, and doesn't see colour casts. For example, I didn't spot the green tint on the ceiling of Paisley Abbey (here and here) but I think it does exist. I minimised it a bit in the photos. Lighting can make all the difference. Like between this shaver photo and that shaver photo. The sparkly brilliance in my shaver photo is a result of a single flash light bounced off the my kitchen ceiling with the kitchen lights off. It isn't what the shaver looks like when all the kitchen lights are on. Since nobody uses a shaver in a darkened room lit only by flash lighting, I suppose it is a bit super-realistic. Realty sucks sometimes.

Where I think it most important to be neutral and fair is when photographing other artworks. I think it ok to compensate for bad or uneven lighting, to aim for something you'd get when conditions were more controllable. But not to turn the artwork into something it isn't. Old faded paintings are old and faded. Perhaps the question is whether someone visiting the artwork after seeing your image would feel deceived. Looking at some other pictures of the ceiling mosaic (here and here) and in the photos in this article it does look like the mosaics are low contrast in reality. Is it due to the lighting? How would they look at night under artificial light, or if photographed with flash? Are they dusty? If someone gave them a good clean and then produced before/after photos, would it be embarrassing to now yours should look like the before ones? I recall having problems with my photos of Fitzrovia Chapel which also had mosaic and gold leaf. What does one do if the mosaic is dull and dusty and so nobody at FP goes wow unless you push the processing a bit?

I guess at FP we expect you to bring out the best in what you see, but not go so far that we feel cheated. Perhaps we are over-examining your mosaic pictures now, and if you'd uploaded the current version originally, nobody would have said anything. -- Colin (talk) 08:07, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Just realized I didn't respond to this, although I'm not sure there's much to add. I suppose I just get frustrated at the lines people draw, often seemingly arbitrary, for what aspects of perception it's acceptable to enhance, negate, fudge, or compensate for, or what kinds of instruments/electronics/lenses/accessories are acceptable to use, how much something should be "made" to look like it "actually" looks (to whom? when? how?), etc. It often seems like the purpose is less to conform to some Platonic ideal or some objective reality than to distinguish a "high photography" from "low photography" or to conform to what, at some point, emerged from practitioners as a universal code of what kinds of environmental, electronic, optic, etc. distortions or compensations are permissible and when that makes the image lousy rather than better. I'm not exempt from this either, of course. There are certain kinds of radical edits that put me off, too. Just venting a bit here is all. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk |  06:42, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

As Jcb closed the ANU thread I will ask you here. Can you apologize for the accusations of vandalism and wikilawyering? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 01:13, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

In Commons:Deletion requests/Files on User:Faebot/SandboxT Fae listed 258 images that provided portraits of notable figures. I know Jan isn't flavour of the month, being blocked and all that, but think about what was involved in creating those. I'm not sure how many YouTube videos they came from? A handful, a dozen, several dozen? Each of them watched until you find the best frame for the person. Screen grab, crop, adjust. Then Jan labels the JPG with the title of the person in the frame, the creator of the video, the event the image was taken from, the source video url (though sometimes imprecise) and the licence url (which may or may not have a 4 rather than a 3 it should have had). He then uploads each one with Upload Wizard, supplying again those details for the file description page, along with the appropriate category for the person (which can be time-consuming to locate).

He created those images over a period of several months earlier this year. Fae wanted them all deleted based on a single digit being possibly incorrect in the EXIF. That can only be described as vindictive gravedancing, and there's no way they would have been deleted. There are simply too many examples, in the upload history of anyone who uploads third-party JPGs, where the EXIF of a JPG is inconsistent with the claims made on Commons or with reality. And despite Jan's weird obsession with colour alterations, at least he is using a professional image application that correctly saves the colour profile in a JPG, unlike the broken applications like MS Paint or Paint.Net.

So, we're talking hours and hours of work. And the extra EXIF information was added by Jan in good faith because he knows such information survives when the JPG is downloaded from Commons and used elsewhere. It is useful stuff. It wasn't perfect, but there are plenty cases where people link to a source URL that isn't as precise as it should be or has moved, or where they get the licence wrong.

If Fae had got is way, all those hours of work would have been wasted. So on the one had it is good that you volunteered to fix the issue. But you were way too quick, and didn't wait to see if anyone agreed with Fae that there was a problem, that it needed fixed or what it should be fixed to. Simply volunteering was all that was needed to neutralise Fae's claim that volunteers wouldn't/shouldn't fix it. As you see, most people thought the DR ridiculous and it closed with a keep. Your edits, which totally destroyed all the EXIF in 30 files (at that point, with the intention of doing the rest) was taking a bulldozer to all that metadata. Data which someone had taken time to type and insert file-by-file. There really isn't another word for that than vandalism, which my dictionary describes as "action involving deliberate destruction of or damage". Whether your overall intentions were good or bad, you were thoroughly reckless and destructive. And when asked to stop, responding with a "fuck you, I'm actually going to speed up" kind of response, is a sure way to end up at AN/U. -- Colin (talk) 10:17, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Dear member of the Commons Photographers User Group,

I'm wishing you all the best for the New Year and I hope you're going to have many memorable photo opportunities in 2019. With 2018 coming to an end, it's time to look back at the past 12 months. I'm curious – what would you consider your best shot of 2018 and why? I invite you to share your image and your thoughts in order to provide others with the opportunity to celebrate, learn, and enjoy:

Your best shot 2018

Thanks for all your effort in sharing your vision of the world with others under a free license!

Warmly, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 19:33, 30 December 2018 (UTC)