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Illustration Commons:Deletion requests/File:Flag of a fiction nazi country.png, the focus should be on educational value regardless of whether the format is flags or something else. Any media that does the opposite, i.e. has damaging educational value or may be deliberately misleading, does not meet the mission of this project or of any sister project. It only takes a few minutes to see how user-created fantasies like this example are getting used in "political" userboxes in multiple languages, this causes genuine confusion and has been a means to use Wikimedia Commons as a free host to spread conspiracy theory misinformation. --Fæ (talk) 07:04, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With all due respect, I think a poorly anti-aliased raster image of a fictional Nazi flag used on no pages and uploaded by a user who has only ever made three contributions is perhaps the most extreme example of what you are trying to show. The average case is much more harmless. Mysterymanblue 07:29, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why is policy even being discussed on administrators' noticeboards? And regarding fictional flags, we literally have "{{Fictional flag}}" that explicitly says that a flag is fictional. The solution should be having a bot report which fictional flags are used on Wikipedia's and other Wikimedia websites and let users judge if it's appropriate or not, and the bot can also leave messages on Wikipedia talk pages so regular contributors and other watchers will be inform if a flag gets tagged here. Note that in some cases sources will attribute a flag to a locality that later turns out to be false. Many fantasy flags are here because of historical and/or educational sources mentioning them. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:44, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Either user created fantasy flags like "Flag of a fiction nazi country.png" are allowed or they are not. If the mission of Commons has been changed to all possible user created graphics that they may want to post on their user page, without regard to political flavour or intent or educational value, then there are no rules for what is "extreme" or "harmless" as these are subjective.
Equally important is that the processes apply to everyone regardless of status. A newbie uploading a file should be subject to the same terms and good faith as our most active administrator. --Fæ (talk) 11:14, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fæ I think it is a bit unreasonable to say it is necessarily all or nothing. Like most things, the value of these flags lies on a spectrum. File:Flag of a fiction nazi country.png lies on one end, and File:Canada Weed Flag.svg and File:Cuban rainbow flag.svg lie toward the other. It is my feeling that users should be given wide latitude for what they would like to put on their user pages. A few fictitious/fictional flags does not harm anyone as long as they are clearly labeled and prudently used, especially if those flags reflect the identity or belief of the user in question.
I agree with you that that the standard should be the same regardless of experience on the project. The reason why I brought up the fact that the user had "only ever made three contributions" is because there have historically been a large number of successful deletion requests against the personal photos of users who have not contributed in any other way. The fact that the user is inexperienced will bolster your argument, regardless of whether you or I agree with that reasoning. Mysterymanblue 19:57, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
These just look like pro-British Empire garbage, with any user page usage likely to only cause project disruption or create a hostile environment for contributors, especially those Wikipedians that have openly stated where they live and would presume to be treated respectfully.
TBH I think it's more an alt-history thing. (Mozambique and Rwanda have joined the Commonwealth despite their never having been part of the Empire.) The Japan ones just illustrate that its possible to generate an infinite number of vaguely plausible-looking flags based on real-world emblems and elements cobbled together. All very nice, ... on a different website. GPinkerton (talk) 13:05, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is little agreement on any of this so far. Some points raised are:
Is Commons responsible for the accuracy of Wikipedias? Or is that their problem?
If "miseducation" is a problem, then how can Commons address that (or can it)? Many resources are perfectly valid on Commons, but become misinformation if and when they're mis-used, mis-captioned, mis-described. That's not something Commons has much control over.
The term "fictional" is being bandied around as a reason to delete. Yet there is no Commons policy which supports that.
"Fictional" is being used for several distinct meanings: within a notable work of fiction, as the immediate creation of a single Commons uploader, and also as proposed new flags for real-world regions. The proposed group is most problematic here: some have later been adopted officially, some have been part of serious campaigns to change the identity of a region, some have extremely politically biased uses in reality, yet this gives them a clear educational function here. The "fictional" label is being abused. It is also being mis-applied innocently, because so little checking has been done before claiming "this flag does not exist outside WM".
Commons has a tradition of accepting uploader claims for veracity and significance. en:WP:V is not a Commons policy - we do not require en:WP:RS sourcing to prove that an image is as claimed, or risk deletion. Yet that seems to be a new demand here - that would be a major change for Commons, or a peculiar abberation to one form of content.
As a major problem, there are deletion requests active made on the basis of some shared feature: "pan-African fantasy flags" and "variations of the Union Jack". This is not a shared feature of their authorship, or of our confidence in off-wiki sourcing, it's about their particular topic. Pan-Africanism should not be used as a criterion for deletion like this.
If there is to be any resolution to this, my feeling is that we have to base "proposed" flags on the prior existence of a proposal for such off-wiki (although that should be broad - there are many proposals to "put the Welsh flag into the UK flag" etc. and we should not delete those because the version drawn isn't simply identical to some off-wiki exemplar).
Outside proposed flags, claiming to be solid proposals for flags, I would also take a lenient and inclusive view of fictional flags created as fictions. It's not misleading to draw a flag for Gondor, and if a WP wants to not use it or to delete whole articles, that's on them. We do not improve Commons by deleting such.
The above points are really obfuscatory and quite badly misrepresent nearly all the points that have actually been raised. This will be obvious on examination of the discussion and I encourage no-one to believe such garbled pronouncements like "The term "fictional" is being bandied around as a reason to delete" (not true) and "Pan-Africanism should not be used as a criteria for deletion like this." (even worse; the nominated files in that case were mostly uploaded by a single user who supports their deletion) GPinkerton (talk) 14:25, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Another illustration of the kinds of reasoning involves the basic errors made in point 6 above: Andy Dingley has confused the United Kingdom with the British Isles and has misunderstood why any file purporting to be a "flag of the British Isles" is ipso facto out of scope. GPinkerton (talk) 14:56, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes things are created for some (good) reason but not used. For example the file to the right.
Is that a threat to Commons and Wikipedia?
What is the educational value of this file?
Not all fictional stuff is evil!
Personally I think this discussion is not constructive because do get rid of "unwanted" files it is suggested that Commmons should delete files used on userpages. Commons have allowed userpage images for many years at least as long as the userpage belongs to a user that have made constructive edits and as long as it does not get extreme.
Also I do not think it has been well defined what kind of fiction that is not in scope. Some users also mentioned "Fake coats of arms". So if I create a flag or a COA to my userpage is that fake and a threat to Commons?
What if some users on Wikipedia would like to discuss how a flag should look like and they create 3 different versions and discuss the versions on a talk page? Would that be disruptive and propaganda? Or should it be allowed to keep the "fake" versions to preserve the history on Wikipedia.
And what is the plan? If the DR is closed as delete is that then taken as concensus that we can delete hundreds of flags that someone think is fictional?
Is this the beginning of Commons should be the supreme judge of what files wikis are allowed to use?
I think the correct way to discuss is not on the admin noticeboard and not in a few deletion requests. It should be discussed with involvement on many users. And it should be announced globally so all wikis have a chance to comment and to move files to their wiki if they want to keep it. --MGA73 (talk) 19:20, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MGA73 These are really just and fallacies. The point raised above are alarmist retorts to absolutist strawman arguments absolutely no-one is making. The discussion was started to establish whether consensus exists that all user-created flags are somehow exempt from COM:SCOPE, and discussion has proved to all that no such consensus exists and that therefore no blanket rules should be made. GPinkerton (talk) 00:58, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that is not true. I don’t think anyone ever said that ALL user-created flags were in scope. So there were no need for such a discussion. The discussion was for example if we should delete files in use because some users thought the files were fiction. And someone brought in propaganda in the discussion. I think that rules and policies should apply to all files. We should not treat files differently depending on they could be used for a cause we agree with or oppose to. For me this is like the freedom of speech. I may not agree with what someone say but I will defend their right to tell their opinion. Therefore I also defend users rights to decorate their userpage as they want and for wikis to discuss and use files as they want. But as always there are exceptions so illegal and purely disruptive stuff excluded. --MGA73 (talk) 05:25, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that rules and policies should apply to all files. Good. We can agree there are no blanket exemptions for fantasy flags. This stuff about dying on hills for liberty of expression is very overblown and misplaced. Commons is COM:NOTHOST and there is no inherent right to have one's vexillographic fantasies indulged on this particular website. GPinkerton (talk) 05:54, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MGA73 Is that relevant somehow? Is it an image purporting to represent a flag? Why would you keep bringing up categories of things which have nothing to do with the matter at hand? It's en:whataboutism ... GPinkerton (talk) 15:19, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GPinkerton Yes I think it is relevant. You claim that you think we should delete fiction. Now you speak of flags. But on COM:AN you also mention COA. Why mention COA if you that it is only flags that is the problem? I'm trying to find out if you only think we should delete fictional flags or if we should also delete fictional COA, fictional logos, fictional symbols etc. So I'm trying to find out if you want to delete all fictional <whatever>. COM:NOTHOST does not only apply for flags. It apply for all files that does not have an educational purpose. I think it is a fair and simple question to ask. Do you think we should delete the file? --MGA73 (talk) 15:28, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MGA73 It's a question I have no interest in answering or discussing. You are mistaken; I have nowhere discussed deleting anything but flags, I began and have conducted this discussion purely about flags, and I have never suggested (and have repeatedly made this clear, to you in particular) that I "think we should delete fiction". Please reread the entire discussion from the very beginning if you still believe that my position is anything like that. My position is that everything out of scope should be deleted, which, being policy, is entirely uncontroversial. GPinkerton (talk) 15:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GPinkerton I know it is an unpleasent question to answer. If you say A) Yes I think we should delete it even if it is related to LGBT+ then you risk angry comments from users that think you are homofobic etc. And if you say B) No we should not delete stuff related to LGBT+ because COM:SCOPE and COM:HOST does not apply to such files then you would risk angry comments from users that think your scope it to remove files that favor "unwanted" POV.
I think that we all agree that we should only keep files that are in scope. What we do not agree is what scope is.
Since "propaganda" and "deleting files in use" was also brought up in the discussion I worry what the end goal is here. You can of course only speak for your self.
Your goal may only be flags (even if you mentioned COA for some reason) but I think other users that joined the discussion may have other goals than just flags. Since your proposal and your DRs could be used as an argument to delete other stuff I think it is relevant to clarify the motives. --MGA73 (talk) 15:52, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MGA73 I'm sorry this is incoherent now. What is "related to LGBT+"? Whose motives for what? What goal? (Where is this stuff coming from ...?) I think you must be confusing me for someone else, I don't know what you're referring to. I certainly haven't mentioned propaganda anywhere, for example. Honestly I think you are trying to include all kinds of subjects that don't seem to have any bearing on whether user-generated fantasy flags are exempt from COM:SCOPE. As I say, I am not willing to discuss the matter further, since it's clear that they are not. GPinkerton (talk) 16:01, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GPinkerton I asked you about File:WikiDiff logo 1.svg and that is related to LGBT+. I know that it was not you that mentioned propaganda. That is what I tried to say with "other users that joined the discussion may have other goals". As I said somewhere else I think that in use = in scope. So if a user-generated flag is in use I would generally not delete it. If it is not in use and not likely to be used ever then I would not make much complaints in a DR. --MGA73 (talk) 16:13, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This image was extracted from an upload by Fæ, when I cut it out I was unaware of the whole "fantasy flags" discussion, but it's some sort of poetic irony that I found an image proving a "fantasy" flag to be real while the person that allowed me to prove it is arguing for their deletion.
Let me start with a little story here, there is a flag tagged as a fictional flag here, it has been uploaded dozens of times by both dozens of socks and dozens of other users, many deletion requests have been started over it, many ended in "Delete" some in "Keep", several versions of this alleged "fictional flag" still exists on Wikimedia Commons and they have all been tagged and categorised as such. The main sockmaster keeps adding them to Wikipedia's and others keep removing them, their usual solution is nominating them for deletion on Wikimedia Commons, this has mixed success. This is an ongoing issue for over a decade now. On the other side of the globe the Internet Archive faces lawsuits and its future is at stake, many Wikimedians panic including Fæ and a mass-import (I've dreamed of for years) started, they start quickly importing millions of files together with a team of people that try to grab as much from the Internet Archive as they can, among these imports Fæ uploaded an old Dutch flag chart that actually proves this "fantasy flag" to have historical precedent. my bad, I messed up the timeline, this is an earlier upload from 2015.
Now, this obviously doesn't count for user-generated flags, but a better solution for fantasy flags would be by having a policy which dictates that fantasy flags should be named "Fantasy flag of XXX", when I got a sock-upload flag of the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina undeleted I renamed it from "Drapeau" to "Pseudodrapeau", but others then argued that historical evidence for the flag existed and it is no longer considered a "fantasy" flag. I know that most of this discussion is about "user inventions" but people have diverse views and some people create flags to express those views, but they should probably be tagged and named as fantasies and a bot should notify Wikipedia pages when such flags are used outside of user space, or a window should pop up "This flag (NAME) has been tagged on Wikimedia Commons as being "fictional", are you sure that you want to add it to Wikipedia?" Because some fictional flags are useful, some aren't. But they should be fine for userboxes but not for articles. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:38, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with MGA73's comments about file history (and most of their others), I actually have filed an ongoing undeletion request for a month or so now for a file I discovered in an older revision of a Wikipedia article that was deleted as "being a fantasy" but from my own research I found historical evidence that does claim that the polity had coats of arms, unfortunately the image was deleted because a West-German book said that the polity did not have a coat of arms. Tagging it as "fictional" for content disputes is essentially "a Citation Needed for Wikimedia Commons", a lot of factually true educational content exists on Wikipedia's with "Citation Needed" for various reasons, the information could be true but the source provided is seen as unreliable, it could be removed because someone added it to the global spam-blacklist (despite being an educational website that doesn't run any advertisements, but some users "spammed" it), or perhaps the citations were placed by sockpuppets and those are automatically reverted. True information can be unsourced for a variety of reasons but that does not make it less true, it just makes it currently unverified. The "Fictional flag" template for many disputed flags is Wikimedia Commons' version of the "Citation Needed" tag. Usually unsourced information only gets removed if it's highly unlikely or unsourced for many years but even that's arbitrary. Wikimedia Commons should not dictate what is factual or not, it should ask people for sources and then ask them to prove something to be legitimate. Our knowledge of history keeps expanding as we find new old works, new discoveries happen all the time. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:47, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
An obscure upload of mine from six years ago and a deletion I never expressed a view on, not exactly a gotcha moment. As mentioned I think this would benefit from a policy-based RFC which does the minimal and obvious of helping to make basic housekeeping easy. The burden should remain on the uploader to understand the scope of this project and understand what it is they are uploading.
Media with "unverifiable" assertions as to whether it has reasonable educational value, has to be accountable and judged using the precautionary principle in a similar way to how we scrutinize copyright assertions. The burden of proof is not on the person asking the question. --Fæ (talk) 20:39, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
COM:PRP"The precautionary principle is that where there is significant doubt about the freedom of a particular file, it should be deleted." Copyright. It would be a significant extension to apply that to SCOPE and our current test of "realistically useful for". Andy Dingley (talk) 21:01, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Again the false claim about "burden of proof" and "precautionary principle". Those two are related to copyright and nothing else.
This is in my opinion not just about housekeeping but getting a backdoor to delete content that "we" do not like for some reasons. In the discussion on COM:AN the word "propaganda" was used. So I see an attempt to introduce some sort of en:Guardian Council that can eliminate content that might favor undesired opinions leaving only "the right" opinion.
I think to be balanced Commons should honor COM:CENSOR. If someone want to upload propaganda we should let them. We should just make sure that propaganda for the opposite view is also allowed. That will ensure that Wikipedia have media to use for both opinions. The risk is that users start to delete files showing one view leaving only the files that support the other view. --MGA73 (talk) 21:07, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly does it mean for a flag to be "fictional", anyway? Once you've created it, it exists. It seems to me that only the description can be fictional: the claim that it is the flag of something, that it represents something. If I make a solid red flag and say that it has been used as a Communist symbol at times, that is not fiction. If I make the same flag image and say it represents the blood of ruby-miners, that is presumably fictional. What about File:Thin Blue Line Flag (United States).svg? No question that it has become an emblem of a certain right-wing notion of the police in the United States, but as far as I know it has not been officially adopted by any significant organization (I stand ready to be corrected on that, but our description doesn't say so); so is it a fictional flag that a lot of people use, or is it a non-fictional flag? For flags that are not specifically the emblem of an organization, at what point does the flag pass from fiction to non-fiction? I don't think there is any one general answer to that. - Jmabel ! talk03:30, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See my point #4 above. "Fictional" has at least three meanings, just within the examples we've seen so far. For that reason, blanket deletions "as fictional" or attempts to define deletion policy on that basis should be rejected. Even if we reject some "fictional" flags as outside SCOPE, other "fictional" flags are within it, so we'd need a much better term of definition. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:56, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Vexillology, as a form of graphic design, is art. Most art has intrinsic value beyond its popularity, official use, or capacity to provide educational value. Commons hosts a large number of works of art by non-notable people which are incapable of representing anything in the real world (see Category:Abstract art). Most of the time, the best "educational value" that these pieces of abstract art have is that they are capable of representing the concept of abstract art. This is similar to how most of these fantasy flags, in an educational setting, would perhaps only be suitable to represent the concept of vexillology (and, as the case may be, alternate history). True, an image of non notable abstract art could be used in a classroom setting to critique and analyze the technique and purpose of the artist, but an image of a fantasy flag could likewise be used to analyze the symbolism and design choices of its designer. So what is the fundamental difference between abstract art and vexillology that causes one to receive so much harsher scrutiny here? Why have there not been concerted efforts to delete en masse the non notable abstract art hosted on Commons? Mysterymanblue 04:42, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why have there not been concerted efforts to delete en masse the non notable abstract art hosted on Commons? is an interesting question. According to Commons:Deletion_policy#Not_educationally_useful "Self-created artwork without obvious educational use" are one of the "Examples of files that are not realistically useful" deemed ""Out of scope"" which "should normally be listed at Commons:Deletion requests". It's true that an "image of a fantasy flag could ... be used to analyze the symbolism and design choices of its designer" but there is no reason why anyone should use self-invented fantasy flags; there are plenty of such images that exist independently that would be infinitely more within COM:SCOPE. They're just not "realistically useful" unless educational use is "obvious", and this is far from the case with such vanity projects as these. GPinkerton (talk) 05:07, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you have to keep throwing pejorative terminology like "vanity projects" into this?
We have "realistically useful for an educational purpose" as inclusion criteria. That's all we need. We don't judge based on the intentions of an uploader.
Do you really not understand the difference between a coat of arms that exist in the real world and one that does not? Yet more whataboutism does not make these tendentious arguments less tedious. GPinkerton (talk) 14:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mysterymanblue: You ask, "So what is the fundamental difference between abstract art and vexillology that causes one to receive so much harsher scrutiny here?" Answer: the former is unlikely to mislead anyone about history/geography/etc. But I'd also get rid of most users' abstract art. An image or two for your own user page is fine, but we aren't a universal web host. - Jmabel ! talk14:21, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@GPinkerton: "Real world" is a tricky concept. The only difference between Trump's made-up coat-of-arms and the one some con-man tried to sell me is that (1) he's famous/infamous and (2) he bit. - Jmabel ! talk14:25, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
File:Flag of Gibraltar (proposed by me).png"Flag of Gibraltar (proposed by me).png" a non-educational fantasy. Do we permanently host maps with "borders proposed by me"?@Jmabel: I wrote before looking at the file, which I perceive to be quite different to Trump's actual coat of arms, which is a legitimate thing, at least since he was forced to stop using his golf course's previous owner's and apply for his own. Still, for the purpose of this discussion, Narnia (and its flags), Middle-earth, Alderaan, and whatever planet Trump lives on are all entirely real in the sense that they would continue to exist if Wikimedia disappeared overnight. GPinkerton (talk) 14:38, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jmabel: It may be true that the project scope as currently written requires us to delete all non notable artwork. If that's the case, I think it should be changed. The nominal purpose of Wikimedia projects is to make the sum of all human knowledge freely usable. Images of artwork are not knowledge in the traditional sense of the term, and yet they hold value without which the free culture movement would be incomplete. I personally would like Wikimedia projects to encompass every aspect of the free culture movement, even if they lie outside the scope of the sum of all human knowledge. So in my mind, a scoping policy that forces us to delete hundreds of freely usable works of art is not a good thing. Obviously, the question of what Commons should be is, at some level, a matter of subjective personal belief that has no definitive answer, so I don't expect others to necessarily agree. But those are my two cents. Mysterymanblue 20:22, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jmabel: With the exception of illegal or truly heinous content, no. I know this is not exactly the most popular viewpoint, but I think you can still arrive at a conclusion to keep without going to that extreme. Mysterymanblue 23:01, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This image has been deleted a dozen times from Wikimedia Commons as "a fantasy flag, later it turned out to be a real flag, but nobody ever stopped to actually research it because a globally locked Sockmaster that uploaded it, among other "legitimate users", is known for "pushing fantasies".
Another example of a flag that has been deleted probably dozens off times from Wikimedia Commons before being restored (after I requested undeletion) is the flag of the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina with two (2) white stripes in the middle, now a common rationale for its deletion usually revolves around this quote: "The difference between the flag and this “arms” has caused some confusion as it was supposed that the flag should have been also yellow with three blue stripes separated by two white ones. This should however to be blamed to an error in a publication about the flag of 1946." - Neue und veränderte Staatswappen seit 1945 IIa, Die Wappen der Staaten Asiens. In: Jahrbuch / Heraldischer Verein Zum Kleeblatt von 1888 zu Hannover". 1968. P. 67. note 148. However, contemporary evidence shows that this flag is indeed legitimate. this (contemporary) photograph clearly shows it. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:08, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Donald Trung What relevance does this have? You can't seriously be suggesting that any and all fantasy files should be kept on the miniscule chance they somehow come into reality? Is there really and comparison between something that existed and something which does not? Is someone going to discover by looking in some archive that "British Japan" (and its flag) really existed after all? I think not. I think your example is irrelevant and the point made from it is as illogical as arguing all murder should be legalized because there have been unsound convictions in the past. Undeletion is available, which if anything is all the more reason to delete spurious misinformation of this kind; anything wrongly deleted can easily be rectified, there's no reason host every possible image indiscriminately forever. GPinkerton (talk) 09:48, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that you miss the point completely. As an analogy it would be like giving the death penalty to all criminals because murderers exist. Just because flags like that of "British Japan" were uploaded doesn't mean that flags which are disputed in the vexillological scholarship should also be deleted, that is what creating a blanket ban on "fictional flags" would do, it is something that several admins have already been doing for years, I recently came across an actual flag that was deleted as "Spam/Out of scope" while the hoax flag has been on Wikipedia for over a decade all because the person that nominated it for deletion claimed that a reliable source proved it wrong. If you want to deal with flags like that of "British Moçambique" and "British Angola" then sure, but disputed flags alleged to be fictional should be allowed to stay as their educational value can clearly be established as they are useful when discussing the legitimacy of certain flags and other claims. These deletions aren't rare either, and if you think that undeletions are easy you clearly never have had to deal with any undeletion requests, it takes months because no admin would want to unilaterally undelete anything, no matter how obviously it should, yet most deletion requests are closed by only a single admin without much more discussion. Disputes based on external forces should stay, but you seemed to have raised objection to all alleged fictional flags and not just the user-generated ones with or without context. Users can use such flags for WikiProjects, Infoboxes, Etc. without much fuss, for example "the flag of the British Isles" can be used in a WikiProject page as it shows a fusion of different abstract concepts through a single flag. Meanwhile if they are properly tagged as "fictional" and a bot would notify all Wiki's when a fictional flag was being used in articlespace and allow local communities to deal with these Wikimedia Commons wouldn't have to be forced to dictate what other Wikimedia websites should be doing (something which the Meta-Wiki is already doing waaaayyyy too much of). I am not saying that such flags have any special value, I just believe that we should treat them with the same level of scrutiny as we treat selfies of random Indian men or penis pictures, rather than automatically ban all. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:39, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Donald Trung"Just because flags like that of "British Japan" were uploaded doesn't mean that flags which are disputed in the vexillological scholarship should also be deleted" No-one has suggested this. "you seemed to have raised objection to all alleged fictional flags and not just the user-generated ones with or without context" No, I absolutely have not, and I have refuted this strawman argument many times. I have repeatedly stressed that specifically user-generated fantasies should be deleted because they are against policy. "I just believe that we should treat them with the same level of scrutiny as we treat selfies of random Indian men or penis pictures" this is all I am suggesting. There is no especial blanket reason to keep such useless images, and users who are arguing for "blanket keep" with the spurious (and false) claim that the nominated images have an off-wiki existence (e.g. your very own argument here) are misguided. GPinkerton (talk) 13:05, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Additional bulk deletions
I note that despite this discussion still being open, and there being no inclination emerging towards deletion of "fictional flags" as a matter of course, we now have a new series of bulk deletions added on no more than that basis. No doubt some technical glitch prevented them being notified here, but I'm happy to correct that (although I might have missed some).
It is obvious from this discussion that your claims are incorrect and there is no blanket exception to policy for this material, and as such, there is no need for your blanket opposition, since it is based on neither consensus nor policy (and explicitly contradicts the latter), and as such your blanket opposition is simply a disruptive personal preference and should be treated as such, especially as you have, despite your many and lengthy comments, failed entirely to find policy-based grounds for your repeated but inaccurate assertions. GPinkerton (talk) 16:19, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Now that you've got the ad hominems and the stalking out of the way, have you yet found any support in the discussion above as to why fictional flags are a reason for summary deletion? Andy Dingley (talk) 16:56, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@GPinkerton: There might not be consensus for a blanket keep but there is no consensus for a blanket deletion either. If you nominate these files for deletion under the same blanket rationale every time, others have the right to oppose that rationale on similarly broad grounds. Mysterymanblue 20:39, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mysterymanblue Indeed, although since I have not proposed any blanket deletions (despite numerous claims to the contrary), that hypothetical eventuality will to arise, and users will have to think of policy-based reasons why they believe each and every file is in scope and meets the demands of policy. Arguments weak in this regard should be judged and ignored accordingly. GPinkerton (talk) 20:43, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You have repeatedly failed to demonstrate, or certainly not to convince anyone else, that "fictional flag" itself implies "out of scope". Andy Dingley (talk) 21:02, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Andy Dingley No, you have again confused your personal preference with prevailing opinion; they are in fact opposed. The fact that you keep misrepresenting my point as "fictional flag" itself implies "out of scope" proves one of two things: either you still don't understand what this discussion is about, or you simply don't care, and wish to express your thoughts and desires regardless. GPinkerton (talk) 21:51, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You take half a dozen categories or editor's whole contributions where the only plausible common factor is "fictional flags" and you tag them all as "fails COM:SCOPE". There are really only two reasons to delete anything here: licensing or scope. But you're still failing to demonstrate that "fictional flags" implies, and implies in all cases, being outside SCOPE. I've given more specific and quantifiable rules as to how we could make this clear and concrete; you haven't, you just keep tagging stuff for deletion. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What you find plausible is none of my concern. Your "rules" appear to be empty whataboutery that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. If you don't like the policy, that is also not my problem, but another of yours. GPinkerton (talk) 23:16, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Andy Dingley: I don't think User:GPinkerton is asserting that all fictional flags are out of scope, and his nominations for deletion do not even use the term "fictional" except where that is part of a category name. I believe he is saying that users can't just make up fantasy flags of their own choosing that have absolutely no independent use in the real world, and that falls under the same heading as non-notable artists using Commons to host any other sort of art (excepting only in scope as usable illustration). GPinkerton, have I understood this correctly? - Jmabel ! talk00:31, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
" I believe he is saying that users can't just make up fantasy flags of their own choosing that have absolutely no independent use in the real world, " Which is what I put forward myself. However GPinkerton has also been nominating a slew of flags that do have independent real-world origins, these are ones where we disagree.
I would like to try and agree some abstract principles here first, such as "fictional is not a reason of itself, if that fiction has some real-world basis to it", which the ever-hostile GPinkerton describes as "empty whataboutery" and instead favours more and more bulk deletions, either to establish "precedents" (we don't use "precedent" here, per policy, except that we increasingly do so) or simply to get as much deleted as possible.
There are groups here that do have real word origins. The flags of the Italian Social Republic were obscure, short-lived, but real. The images here are INUSE on that basis. I'm not sure that the examples we have here are accurate, or even that we should keep them, but that's a lot more complicated a question than just hiding behind an unexplained "SCOPE". Andy Dingley (talk) 09:03, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The principles are already agreed, and no-one needs to wait for your agreement to continue work on the project; you have no powers of veto. Your nonsense about the Italian Social Republic is just that: nonsense. None of the images nominated for deletion has anything to do with the Italian Social Republic, which unlike the flags nominated for deletion, existed in this universe. Once again, we see Andy Dingley leaping to conclusions confected from his own misunderstanding of what the discussion is about, what Commons policy is, and what Commons is for. Yet more waffle about precedents and made-up and erroneous (and increasingly desperate) claims about the real world being negatively affected by the deletion of fake flags (which are marked as such, contrary to the above under-researched (and disruptive) claims. GPinkerton (talk) 09:13, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@GPinkerton: Your comments in this and related discussions have begun to border on uncivil. Please remember to assume good faith in others and to treat your fellow contributors with respect. We are all working toward the same ultimate goal, after all. Mysterymanblue 09:30, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is it legally possible to have a non-admin trusted usergroup that can see deleted pages?
I was planning on making a proposal for a new user group that could view deleted pages and then "Nominate them for undeletion" in the same way that users can "Nominate pages for deletion" today, this is because Wikimedia Commons is filled with files that have often been deleted because of the death of the author being too recent, but as Wikimedia Commons has now existed for over a decade and when it was first launched most WWII files were still copyrighted a lot has changed. I believe it to be handy to have users that can check deleted files and then ask admins to undelete them without having the ability to undelete these themselves.
When I asked Alexis Jazz for feedback regarding this he stated that the WMF will never allow this because only admins should have this right and it would have severe legal consequences if this was implemented. His reasoning was that admins need to be vetted and are therefore not challenged by the United States legal system, but I also wanted these users to be elected in a similar manner as admins but he claimed that this would make no difference. Noting that his proposed user group of "Maintainers" deliberately wouldn't be able to view deleted pages because of this legal reason.
In the pt.WP there are "Eliminators" who can see deleted articles. They can also delete and restore articles and close AfDs, and they are not sysops. They are "elected" is the same manner, but they are not sysops.--SirEdimonDimmi!!!06:37, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Even very limited distribution of copyrighted material (for example, sending a song to a friend) can be considered copyright infringement. In the case of Wikimedia Commons, distribution to a small group of admins to help facilitate the educational and noncommercial purpose of the project likely qualifies as fair use. The concern with expanding that group is that such action may 1) more greatly diminish the commercial value of the copyrighted material (because it can be accessed for free by more people) and 2) cause the distribution to be less narrowly tailored for the educational needs of the project. Both of these actions tend to decrease the viability of a fair use defense and to increase the likelihood of a lawsuit. So the smaller the group who can access deleted files, the better. That's why we presumably limit access to admins.
I think you make a good point, though, that perhaps admins are not able to fulfill our need to undelete some files. I'd support the idea you are putting forward. The claim that the law would only allow us to do this with admins is bogus. The law does not make a distinction between admins and non-admins. The important thing is that that group is small and uses their privilege to see these files in a focused way. Mysterymanblue 08:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agree it's not a literal legal issue, nor does the WMF dictate how this works. Project roles, including new Wikimedia Commons roles that can have access to deleted material, can be proposed and changed if there's a consensus for it. However this has been discussed several times and the system was not changed as there was no consensus.
The vast majority of deleted media still has public records and anyone with a few search skills can probably find the same files elsewhere if they are of any real public interest. --Fæ (talk) 09:04, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Allowing non-administrator users to have access to deleted pages would vastly increase the frequency and volume of legal complaints. (It could have even worse consequences than that in the long term, up to and including corrective legislation by Congress, which would be a disaster.) It is difficult to overstate how much legal and practical difficulty this would cause the Foundation. To be frank, community adoption of such a disastrous policy would create an actual emergency that would likely require Board intervention. I normally favo{u}r and support community-driven initiatives, so please believe me when I say I am not raising this set of concerns lightly. The current system is not broken -- so the best advice is 'don't fix it.' MikeGodwin (talk) 13:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's an interesting opinion from Godwin, but it is now over 12 years old. The current WMF legal team may have quite different views about the risks of providing access to a wider volunteer group, plus case law in corporate liability of "hosts" has moved on a huge amount since then. That choice is not a legal one, it is an operational decision with possible legal exposure, made not because any law tells you how to do it. I have no doubt that if a defined role was limited to elected volunteers, perhaps with additional requirements like identification to Oversight or WMF staff, then there's no conflict with WMF legal nor need for operational security to be alarmed. --Fæ (talk) 13:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Donald Trung: I believe the answer to your first question has nothing to do with Portuguese or Brazilian law, but was given by SirEdimon above: the “Eliminators” are vetted by the ptWP community through an RfA-equivalent process, so are as accountable for their usage of the right as are the sysops there. ISTM the impression that communities are enjoined against splitting off such rights is widespread because the topic comes up most often in discussions on enWP (and possibly elsewhere) about the onerousness of the RfA process and the possibility of making ‘partial sysops’ more easily, and in that context it won’t fly. But as I understand the WMF position, there’s no problem giving ‘sensitive’ rights to non-sysops as long as they’re procedurally no easier to acquire (or keep) than the full package.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:43, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Odysseus1479, Yes. Eliminators are accountable for their acts in, pretty much, the same manner as the sysops. They are kind of "semi-sysops". The main differences between them are that eliminators have very limited access to the block tools (actually, they can't block anyone, but all eliminators are also "rollbackers" and in the pt.WP rollbackers can block non-confirmed accounts up to 24 hrs in cases of vandalism) and they can't protect or unprotect pages. Also, there are some decision-making processes that are only for sysops, in which eliminators cannot take part.--SirEdimonDimmi!!!23:50, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Short note 🗒, I am very happy that "Blockers" aren't a thing on Wikimedia Commons, to me the only two (2) essential administrator rights are blocking and (un)deletion, all other sysop rights should eventually be given to specialised user groups to take the work load off of administrators in the future (rather sooner than later, honestly) and many of these other user rights should also be elected, that would make users with advanced user rights already accustomed to "community elections" and most new candidates for admin rights will already have experience with similar duties to the point that our only questions would be "Do I trust this person with handling (un)deletion requests?" and "Do I trust that they will fairly use the blocking tools and not excessively block valuable volunteers and give everyone a fair chance?", page protections and "lower" user rights management could also be electable, but I wouldn't mind seeing those as "sysop exclusive" rights. But admins simply have such a large workload because they have so many exclusive rights, but in the future administrators can become to these "administrators lite" what bureaucrats and checkusers are to admins today. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:58, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding some arguments above, my issue with a lot of deleted content is that it's not organised or categorised at all. In some cases like Russian and Pinoy FOP cases these sometimes are, but in most cases one has to be lucky enough that DR's are tagged with "Undelete in 2XXX". A lot of valuable educational content that should be u deleted remains deleted because nobody ever categorised their deletions. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Per Eliminators: "Há atualmente 17 eliminadores na Wikipédia lusófona. Juntamente com os administradores, constituem um total de 86 usuários com esta permissão." I actually do not envision us to need more, though I am thinking that perhaps I could change the proposal to just adopting "the Lusophone model" rather than my own idea in the form of "page-viewers", but the Page-viewer user group would have a lot less privileges but would also need to be elected and confirmed like current administrators, I just assume that the vetting process (akin to the Lusophone one) would be easier for certain trusted users to go through as they would receive less privileges hence being scrutinised for less, but they would preferably need to be License reviewers with a number of years of experience, depending on whom the community is willing to elect. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:22, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why can't we have individual pages for undeletion requests?
User Xover noted that they wanted to be pinged here if they got a response because a lot of changes happen to this page and you don't always get relevant notifications. Why can't undeletion requests just have individual pages like deletion requests have had for probably over a decade? Most people only file one (1) or two (2) undeletion requests at a time and it would make sense to hust leave those in a tab rather than be forced to watch every undeletion request that is currently filed. It just seems highly impractical for no apparent reason.
Amen! The really high-volume pages are pretty hopeless through the watchlist even on desktop, and watching them drowns out all other pages to watch. Trying to follow a specific undeletion request (e.g. because I filed it) is a nightmare. Xover (talk) 13:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'll also add that the page is currently large enough to constitute a performance problem. Even using the reply tool (which aiui save partial page content through the API and is usually much faster) there is a noticeable lag when replying. Xover (talk) 09:10, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, this page is impossible to use for us mobile users because of its (deliberate?) bad organisation, if you don't believe me then click on this link:
And actually try going to the most recent request, Wikimedia websites are full of apathy and antipathy towards mobile users, but this page takes the cake. It seems that the regular contributors to it simply do not want to discuss its issues or wave them off because they likely never have to deal with them. I think that the reason we don't see many undeletion requests by users that aren't new users that simply don't understand "Commons:Licensing" or the regular experienced users is because the organisation of the page is so uninviting. Seriously, would we have accepted this for deletion requests that if you want to find a deletion request that you go to a single page and keep scrolling until you might find it and get notifications about literally all ongoing deletion requests? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:56, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support separating COM:UDR down to one page per current UDR section (undeletion request). The current situation forced me to specifically ask for a ping in my preload nearly four years ago because some Admins could not or would not comply with the regular ping request in my sig. — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me10:54, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
the problem is on the stubborn and slow sysops processing undeletion requests, not whether the page is split. stop making impractical proposals when they've already been discussed.--RZuo (talk) 21:29, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
people can agree on as many impractical ideas as they want. when the bot is not changing, people can of course implement such ideas thru manual labour.
@RZuo: I see no basis on which you can demand "now or never" here. Am I missing something? Why would the possibility go away if this is not done right now? - Jmabel ! talk02:03, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RZuo: , out of curiosity, can you please explain to my why requests for checkusers can have separate pages for each case which sees far fewer new sections than UnDR? You haven't made any actual case for why the current status quo of undeletions is desirable over the alternative other than the admins should work harder (or in your words "stubborn and slow sysops processing undeletion requests") and ping users more, which is simply more work for everyone. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:17, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jmabel: i doubt this would ever be implemented, neither now nor in future. he can keep talking but nothing will come to fruition.
even if you cannot think but only draw analogies. every checkuser case is noteworthy, and quite often followed up by recurrent requests, but 90%+ of undeletion requests are run of the mill. new users' requests are even often incoherent.
the large number of invalid requests if separated into pages are just junk pages.
you're talking as if your proposal isnt "simply more work for everyone".
it's a duty for the sysops to work properly. they dont need to work harder, but just live up to what they were entrusted for. they are supposed to be efficient and not nitpicky. i hate udr a lot because the handful of users frequenting there need people to spoonfeed them even the most obvious detail and still argue and do not do their job. take a look at an example that's still waiting on the page right now special:permalink/574953586#File:Raül_Romeva_al_Parlament_de_Catalunya.jpg: the lazy user wouldnt even scroll the webpage and so make the requester tell them to scroll, but even after that three days has passed and the request is still sitting there.
@RZuo: , replying to "even if you cannot think but only draw analogies. every checkuser case is noteworthy, and quite often followed up by recurrent requests, but 90%+ of undeletion requests are run of the mill. new users' requests are even often incoherent." The analogy is appropriate as checkuser cases are far less frequent and usually it is "User:A uploads the same kind of images as User:C" (the fact that both these usernames are of German-speaking Vietnamese people interested in Vietnamese history is coincidental, as I didn't refer to the actual users but examples), undeletion requests concern content which is at the heart of Wikimedia Commons, not its community while CUR's are a purely community affair. Most deletion requests are also simply "DW", Out of COM:SCOPE", and "Obvious copyvio." without much more added. In response to "you're talking as if your proposal isnt "simply more work for everyone"." How? One person writes a bot, it saves work as the "Kept" template can then directly link to pages rather than long archives and it makes discussions easier to watch as you don't get every irrelevant notification (irrelevant to your request(s)) in your e-mail, and "it's a duty for the sysops to work properly. they dont need to work harder, but just live up to what they were entrusted for." everyone here is an unpaid volunteer that invest our free time into the project, seeing the small number of admins that patrol undeletion requests I wouldn't be surprised that not many admins want to invest their free time into it because they don't get notified about what they are experts on and often valid UnDR cases tend to be the really complicated ones.
Finally at "the large number of invalid requests if separated into pages are just junk pages." the same could be said about most deletion requests, most of them are simply one sentence nominations and then "Deleted, per nom." but those pages easily help preserve an archival record. Regarding "i hate udr a lot because the handful of users frequenting there need people to spoonfeed them even the most obvious detail and still argue and do not do their job." makes me believe that you just have a personal hatred towards the process and simply don't want to see it improve because of it. Splitting pages benefits everyone involved, it helps the admins keep tabs on the UnDR they have more knowledge about (local copyright law, personality rights, VRT tickets, Etc.), it is easier to link individual pages to VRT tickets on the VRT noticeboard, and those that make requests actually only gets notices relevant to them making them more engaging rather than ignoring any further enquiries because after a while they stop checking every "irrelevant" diff. Sometimes I genuinely wonder how many people would engage with DR's if they had the same inefficient system. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 18:49, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The guideline is not very specific, but it has always been my impression that cats for media sources or provenance, as opposed to the subject or content itself, should be hidden. And yes, files that have no other cats should be considered uncategorized for practical purposes.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:45, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not! They're both huge categories and merging them would cause even more trouble. Also they are far from "images" - many of these are long documents, PDFs etc. and a great many are short documents, i.e. single page scans of enlistment records etc. We need to split these cats down, not merge them. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:02, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So far it looks like they won't be split, but we have a few ways of categorizing these. The main topical category used by the National Archives and Records Administration is the "record group", and we're using these as our main subcategory tree located at Category:US National Archives Record Groups. There are a few hundred record groups, each split into "series" (Category:US National Archives series). These are all hidden categories because their titles aren't usually descriptive enough to be good Commons category titles, so we still have a lot of categorizing to do for individual files. We have Category:NARA images by subject to start with. We could also make a series title un-hidden if it is useful as a category name (for example Category:US National Archives series: Digital Photographs Relating to America's Byways.) We have some large documents from NARA where each and every page is a separate file needing categorization; some of these belong to a subset of "series" called "file units" and I have started a few of these as non-hidden categories if the title is descriptive enough to be used as a category, for example Category:US National Archives File Unit: ABSD-1 - War Diary, 10/2/43 to 11/30/43; that way each text-only page won't remain "uncategorized" for eternity. NARA's organization structure can be helpful for categorizing but it's just an overwhelming task at this point due to the size of the collection (and considering most of NARA has scanned and made available online only 1 to 2% of its record groups so far.) I am kind of enjoying it, though. Ruff tuff cream puff (talk) 02:40, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Media from the National Archives and Records Administration
@Ruff tuff cream puff: why did you change without any discussion a cat tree that has been implemented for nine years - special:diff/570214997? your edits gave rise to major problems. as a long time user you should know substantial changes to a cat should be discussed first.
Change it back. Christ, it's always something when you try to make an effort to organize a massive collection that nobody has touched for nine years. It's a complete unusable mess that's been sitting there for nine years, no one caring to be bold and start the process of organizing and categorizing files so they can be found and used. So I come in and start the work and without fail, someone jumps on my ass for some vague change in wording. Golly, as a long time user I should have known better and started a discussion that would sit there for another nine years with no resolution. Fuckin change it back if you don't like it. And while you're at it, get in there and help us out with some of the actual work. Thanks, have fun. Ruff tuff cream puff (talk) 22:59, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
moving files from one to another redirected target is not organising either. russbot does that all the time.--RZuo (talk) 23:28, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
July 11
public domain content should not be allowed on Commons.. strictly speaking
Something that is Public Domain in the US may be copyrighted abroad... Public Domain vs CC0, CC0 has a fallback license PD does not
Addendum, from CC0: "Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use before applicable copyright or database protection terms expire. Few if any jurisdictions have a process for doing so easily and reliably. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to what rights are automatically granted and how and when they expire or may be voluntarily relinquished. More challenging yet, many legal systems effectively prohibit any attempt by these owners to surrender rights automatically conferred by law, particularly moral rights, even when the author wishing to do so is well informed and resolute about doing so and contributing their work to the public domain." (Text under the CC4 License) This works for if authors wish to release their works into the public domain, but it doesn't work for files that already are in the public domain. CC0 is a better license only for newer works. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:10, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't a use of a public domain entity via wikimedia be under a CC0 license? If you take something from the public domain directly from there, you can transform and copyright it. If you take something from here, you can transform it but it still has to be CC0. If that's true, then it is much better to have public domain content on Commons. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:41, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, CC0 does not compel you to license your works as CC0. It is just a more elaborate way to say that something is in public domain. Ruslik (talk) 06:11, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
More precisely, CC-0 says users may treat the work as if it is in the public domain. In most countries it is impossible to truly place it in the public domain. - Jmabel ! talk15:50, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Splitting the info template and ordering files in the category
Revolutionary indeed, they have actually made a really good point in making those changes as often photographed files have separate licenses and information about them independent of the photographs. While I am not saying that it should be standard practice, I see it as a positive development, although from what I remember file depicts from the Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons (SDC) project were designed to create such information. Great out of the box thinking on part of that contributor. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:26, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing but I think the ordering files part refers to the Category:Brandenburg (Havel) Dom category sort. It seems complicated to try to order the files in the category to me. I'm not clear why the art photo template date is 1831-1832 but I'm guessing it is the date for the house which seems confusing without more details. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:47, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ricky81682: I think you only looked at the diff like I did initially - the diff is a little confusing, check the current state of the page itself.
Use of Art Photo seems sensible to me in this case. While the building is not a literal art piece it is still an object that could have its own copyright (waived as it is by Germany's FOP). – BMacZero (🗩) 23:19, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@BMacZero: Is there a difference? I have no issues with Art photo, just the dating which I presume is its completion date but that's not important. Given Germany's FOP, it's not that important but the other issue was ordering files in a category. This is one where I hope people actually use the category talk page. This seems like a perfect use for it. Some categories may want to be chronological, others reverse, other randomized or something but it seems like overkill to do it to me. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:44, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm against "Art photo" being used here. It's misleading, as this is not "Art". If we find that the template is convenient because it records "A photo of a creative work" and handles some additional metadata on that basis, then we should create another template for that, as either a very generic model of "photo of a creative work", or else a new template for buildings where we can also record features like their geographical location and the location of the photographer.
But misusing templates like this is a trivial convenience and a long-term nightmare. Imagine if the template was then to start adding categorizations, or metadata for museum collections holding the artwork. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:12, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, one issue is ordering the files in the category using the key. On top of the questions what the correct order should be etc, I also do not see how this could be maintained for new uploads, which now automatically go to the bottom of the category. Concerning the template splitting, I see for example that the second template picks up the caption with I gave to the Structured Data, and not the one I have chosen to add to the template, and this is not editable (unless I amend the Structured Data caption).--Ymblanter (talk) 08:45, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree and have never seen any point in ordering files in categories, for that reason. Categories should be small enough to make that redundant and if not, subcategorisation should be considered. Rodhullandemu (talk) 08:58, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would favour using sort orders in many cases, but only where such a sort order is clear enough to be added, and also generates an order which is then of value to readers. Typically that's where subjects in the cat are inherently and obviously named or numbered. I can see neither for this numeric sequence here - can anyone explain what it is? Andy Dingley (talk) 09:15, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It belongs to Art photo, because it is a cultural heritage building, and the official declaration is referenced with given building year=date. Only by using tl art photo one can state this information, give references and ino about the architect if known.
The Sorting is numeric sorting the different views around the object and far and near, keeping together similar photos otherwise seperated just by chance of the file names. One has to consider, that files are always sorted. If not by sortkey than by filename which normally is not realized. This sorting just by chance via file names is not preferable at all. And I am definetly against creating too many subcategories because than the overview is missing. So categories of 100 or 200 files are ok.--Charlotte Heineccius (talk) 09:58, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
+1 to an alternative to "art photo" for buildings if it is needed. A building may be artistic, as may a toaster, a chair, or a fence, but it is not a work of art, it is a practical object, and in most countries (though not Germany) that makes a big difference in copyright law. - Jmabel ! talk15:54, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, a building is not an artwork, and its protection status has nothing to do with that. You might metaphorically call it that, just like you might say the same of a well-designed piece of machinery or even an attractive human, but with reference to things like copyright that doesn't make it a work of art, and most (though not all) countries make this distinction within their copyright laws. - Jmabel ! talk02:08, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to display images in a certain order a gallery should be used. Pretty pointless in a category, it is not what categories are for, the average user is unable to read the mind or guess the motives of the creators of such orders, which in any case cannot be applied universally across the whole of Commons and therefore will always be irrelevant oddities. Oxyman (talk) 03:17, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Oxyman: I totally agree with you if someone wants to sort a whole category. On the other hand, if we have (for example) a hundred or more pictures directly in a category like Category:Hotels in Seattle, it can be useful to use cat sorting to bring together multiple pictures of the same hotel, with the later possibility of actually creating a separate category for that hotel. But if you really want the different images of the same hotel in a particular order? Definitely a gallery page. - Jmabel ! talk19:36, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If we have "multiple pictures of the same hotel", what's wrong with creating a category for it now without having to bother with sorting? Rodhullandemu (talk) 19:50, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Rodhullandemu: I, for one, don't usually like to create a category for something non-notable until it gets to about 4 or 5 images. Usually when I do create a category I do some research on dates, etc., which takes a lot more work than just doing a cat sort on images. - Jmabel ! talk00:15, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Rodhullandemu: Absolutely, but if we have two, and especially if we have one, it is not. By cat-sorting on the name, we are much more likely to notice when we have enough for a sub-category, because they will group together rather than be spread randomly among 100+ images in a parent category. - Jmabel ! talk16:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Jmabel not to create small cats generally, especially not with one or two files. If you open the supercat you only see the subcategories and you have to click endlessly to get an overview. For the sorting one has to consider, that files are always sorted by file names, which mostly is not the atlternative. Sometimes sorting different views is the preparation for the gallery, otherwise one cannot find the best photos out of 150 files.Charlotte Heineccius (talk) 17:51, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but the problem with sorting is that it can not be maintained. You are not going to be here forever, and new uploads automatically go to the bottom of the category.--Ymblanter (talk) 03:34, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Personality Rights Question
Just wondering... isn't there something like a model release required for a picture like this one? Is it legal to just go about and take pictures of random people and publish them on the world wide web? --217.239.8.16621:45, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I couldn't find out anything about the legal situation in Guatemala, and it did seem very disrespectful to me that a picture like this could be published worldwide without - presumably - ever having asked permission of the person herself. I must admit that the "She's only a poor woman in a poor country, who cares. She'll never know I even took this picture" colonial style attitude I see among some photographers really annoys me, and I would hate to see Wikimedia Commons support that type of an attitude. --217.239.4.7308:56, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see what poverty has to do with it. The U.S. is hardly a "poor" country, and the law here is that if you are in public, someone can take and publish your picture, as long as they don't imply that you endorse something, or use the picture to slander you, etc. That "as long as" and "unless" are what personality rights are about, but they are entirely distinct from copyright. (France, for example, sees things very differently and wants license plates blurred, faces blurred in crowd scenes, etc. You don't say what country you are from, but the issue here is whether there is a problem with this under Guatemalan law, not whether there might be if the picture were taken in a different country.) - Jmabel ! talk16:00, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
July 12
Image quality question
Another question, concerning image quality this time. A picture where the person has their eyes accidentally closed looks just awful. Who would want to see such a picture of themselves in a Wikipedia article?
There are more issues with the image this one is derived from. Personality rights, in Germany, are not such a big issue in the case of politicians, but what about the lady in the center of the picture? Has she given her consent to having her picture uploaded and published on a worldwide level? She is so much in focus that I very much doubt she can be considered "Beiwerk". --217.239.4.7309:09, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that if you are going to be the "personality rights cop" (I see this is your second recent post on the matter) it would be very useful if you would create an account so that people can ping you, etc. - Jmabel ! talk16:02, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why, but when I click on the button "Move" at File:MoldavianParliament2021July.png, nothing happens. This is not the case in other files.
I wanted to request a move because, in English, "Moldavian" refers to the old Principality of Moldavia (1346–1859), the Moldavian SSR (1940–1941, 1944–1991) or the geographical region of Moldavia. In the other hand, "Moldovan" refers exclusively to the Republic of Moldova (1991–present), and the file is about the parliament of this country, so the use of "Moldavian" is wrong. See Moldavia, Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, Moldova.
There is a new bot report (https://heber.toolforge.org/drafts/filter) for images in en-wiki rejected drafts (thanks to @William Avery: for making it). Rejected drafts often contain problematic images which sometimes are left to linger after the draft has been deleted.
Note that when checking the report it may be better to select a past date, as the current date report may update as drafts get rejected. MKFI (talk) 13:33, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, that's a goldmine of potential copyvios, great idea and thank you William Avery. Is it possible to look at a range of dates, and/or sort by date? Or even better, automatically tag files associated with rejected drafts for manual review? I suspect files will leave this list if/when the draft is deleted for inactivity after 6 months, but the files will remain. -M.nelson (talk) 08:20, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's not good. Thank you for looking there - the page at Flickr did not finish loading at my computer even now, so I asked. Now I have to find the way to delete this file. Cherurbino (talk) 02:58, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I dont know what is behind this decoration, but I suspect the restaurant owner got very creative during the long lockdown. These puppets are not yet on Streetview so it must be recent.
Is there any category for such scenes?Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:02, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
July 16
Why has Welsh appeared and how do I remove it?
Hi, some apparently random parts of my user interface are now in Welsh (I think) in Commons and on various Wikipedias. The tags added to edits on my watchlists, for example, are now in Welsh, and the "Support us" entry in the main sidebar on Wikipedia is now "Cyfranwch", although none of the other items on that list are translated. I can't think of what I may have done to cause this, and I can't find a way of changing it: I can't find anything on my preferences which indicates a choice of Welsh that I could change. I did add an image to an article on Welsh Wikipedia some time ago but it seems unlikely that that could somehow insert a new language interface on some parts of most Wikimedia pages. I'm also not near Wales so it's not a location thing ... GPinkerton (talk) 09:59, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed this also. If my language is set to "en-GB - British English" in Preferences then I see bits of Welsh in parts of the interface. If I set it to "en - English" then the Welsh goes away. - Htonl (talk) 11:02, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Someone contributed translations to the wrong language on translatewiki.net. Switching to en - English from en-gb - English (UK) in Special:Preferences is a temporary solution if you don't like Welsh for the time being. Nthep (talk) 12:53, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hey! Quick question. If I were to take a photograph of, for example, an ice cream product next to its packaging, would that be freely eligible for use on wikimedia commons and, by extension, wikipedia projects? --EdoAug (talk) 13:22, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RZuo: , am I right in the assumption that, in this example, the ice cream itself without associated packaging or imagery would be fine in most cases? --EdoAug (talk) 17:02, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! I desired to have a map over Azeroth as it stands today in the video game World of Warcraft, as seen in Azeroth in World of Warcraft 2021.jpg, and I was wondering if I kept it vague enough to not breach the policies of Commons? In my interpretation it should comply with the guidelines within COM:Fan art, but I'd love to hear second opinions, as I would like to create more as necessary. Uncertain if this is something I should ask about, but I figured it was best to ask instead of waiting for a possible deletion request. --EdoAug (talk) 12:10, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm under the impression that galleries have become less and less important on Commons and are often poorly maintained. Often, compared to the amount of images now available here, they present an almost ridiculously small, arbitrary and stale selection of images, misleading users who encounter that gallery page and think that's the selection of images Commons has to offer on the subject. A current example I came across is Lake Lucerne - five images, most of them pretty old, small and low-quality by our current standards, whilst Category:Lake Lucerne has hundreds of images, many of them better than the images in the gallery. Now, Commons:Galleries says Galleries should not be created if they merely duplicate the purpose of a category. However, this does not mean they should be deleted or "merged". Categories will always be categories, but galleries can turn into something much more. So, what is the opinion here in cases such as the Lake Lucerne gallery? With time and effort, it certainly could be turned into a well-crafted selection of great Lake Lucerne images, but in its current state, it's useless. My take on this would be to delete the gallery for now, leaving the option open for anyone who would like to create a useful gallery to do so later, of course. No gallery is better than such an embarrassing one, in my opinion. But I'm not sure what the current practice on Commons is in such cases. Gestumblindi (talk) 13:33, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Delete if imperfect" is against everything that built Wikipedia in the first place.
So today, you'll probably get huge support for it.
There's also an issue that Wikidata will probably try to take over this role altogether - which would permit the selection that categories don't give, but loses the editorial opportunity. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:35, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unlike Wikipedia articles, I currently don't have the impression that most Commons galleries are constantly improving and getting better over the years, but rather that they are a neglected area of Commons that is, well, rather embarrassing. Maybe it's a concept that doesn't work too well. Personally, as a long-time Commons contributor, I never felt a need to work with galleries, but of course others might differ. I'm certainly not hell-bent on deleting anything, but I think in such a case, we would lose nothing of value and at the same time don't prevent creating a valuable gallery later on, if someone feels inclined to do that work. Gestumblindi (talk) 16:27, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nice galleries, Jmabel. I definitely am not going to delete them (I'm nobody). By deprecate, I meant to freeze the existing galleries (poor galleries may be deleted after discussion) and ask users not to invest their time and energy in the gallery namespace anymore. 4nn1l2 (talk) 22:24, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While I personally rarely use the gallery namespace, it is useful in many aspects and can be improved in the future. My only real issue with gallery namespaces is that if I type in "Books from France" that it doesn't suggest any categories to me, but that is the fault of the search engine(s) used on Wikimedia Commons. Regarding maintenence, galleries can be the home to certain "curated" high quality media files or files more relevant to a certain subject, for example all depictions of a certain thing in other works. But the issue with the gallery namespace remains that it remains under-utilised. It is just a shame that the "(main)" namespace is occupied by galleries and not categories. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:09, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But regarding the original question, well, it would be like Wikipedia deleting old stubs because "if someone wishes to re-create the article, they can write a new one", expanding stubs is often better than writing a completely new article and expanding an existing gallery would probably be preferable over deleting "unmaintained" ones. The overall problem is probably a lack of (interested) volunteers rather than an issue intrinsic to the gallery namespace. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:11, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The main problem is with the interface, which prefers galleries over categories and doesn't link the latter prominently enough from the former. Galleries are useful when they have a good selection of images. If the assortment of files available when the gallery was created was poor, the gallery needs maintenance to stay useful, but otherwise galleries serve their purpose quite well, and there is no substitute. Some old galleries were made as a substitute to (the originally non-existent?) categories, and such galleries could be deleted, or simply redirected to the categories (perhaps with a soft redirect template). –LPfi (talk) 11:00, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not clear what about this category is "weird", but in the sense that categories help people to find the images they seek (a user may plausibly have a need for a free image, depicting a clock showing nine minutes past one, for example), they are all "cool". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits10:59, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Old photo deleted without any credible claim of copyvio
File:Kaiserkanal01.jpg was uploaded by User:Hph on dewp sometime before 10 May 2004, which was before commons was created!
As per Xover's comment in the undeletion discussion, it's certainly a scanned image, "not born-digital". The question is whether the uploader scanned their own work from their own photo album (which could explain the black borders), or from some other source (a magazine, the curling?). The very low size is not atypical for early web times. When I first started scanning my own physical photographs, the results were similar. Personally, I would be content with a simple statement by User:Hph in this case, "yes, this is my own photograph which I scanned" without any formalities, as we have otherwise no indication that it was taken from somewhere else, but without any response by the uploader, I think a deletion based on COM:PCP is still reasonable enough. Gestumblindi (talk) 21:01, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See de:Special:Contributions/Hph. Not ever having been active on Commons does not mean the person will not respond, but you'd perhaps better ask at the project where they are active (there was a proposal once to do so when somebody's file was proposed for deletion, I don't know what happened). And yes, I think a statement by the person would be enough. –LPfi (talk) 11:14, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Almost: No Vespian on OSM, but Hjuston is used as the spelling for sr-Latn (Serbian Language in latin script) [3]. Why Wikimaps would (does) display that instead of English (or anything else, for that matter) is a mystery to me, though. --El Grafo (talk) 08:38, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are a great many images on eBay, of out-of-copyright works such as old postcards, ephemera, or paintings, that can legitimately be uploaded to Commons. A while after an eBay sale ends, its images disappear from view and are lost to us.
The task of uploading such images manually is laborious and time consuming, so much so as to be a deterrent.
It would be beneficial to have a tool or script that can automate as much of this task as possible, akin to Flickr-to-Commons.
Because the majority of images on eBay are still in copyright, use of the tool should be limited (or rate-limited) to users who have applied for and been granted the ability to use it (such as is done with AWB, for example).
The tool should account for the fact that some offers on eBay include multiple images; the user should be able to select (or deselect) some or all of the images from a given offer for upload. It should work on any eBay domain (ebay.com, ebay.co.uk, etc.)
All edits made by the tool should use an identifying tag in the edit summary, and all images uploaded by it should be added to a category associated with the tool.
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Short note 🗒, I am very happy that "Blockers" aren't a thing on Wikimedia Commons, to me the only two (2) essential administrator rights are blocking and (un)deletion, all other sysop rights should eventually be given to specialised user groups to take the work load off of administrators in the future (rather sooner than later, honestly) and many of these other user rights should also be elected, that would make users with advanced user rights already accustomed to "community elections" and most new candidates for admin rights will already have experience with similar duties to the point that our only questions would be "Do I trust this person with handling (un)deletion requests?" and "Do I trust that they will fairly use the blocking tools and not excessively block valuable volunteers and give everyone a fair chance?", page protections and "lower" user rights management could also be electable, but I wouldn't mind seeing those as "sysop exclusive" rights. But admins simply have such a large workload because they have so many exclusive rights, but in the future administrators can become to these "administrators lite" what bureaucrats and checkusers are to admins today. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:58, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
Support separating COM:UDR down to one page per current UDR section (undeletion request). The current situation forced me to specifically ask for a ping in my preload nearly four years ago because some Admins could not or would not comply with the regular ping request in my sig. — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 10:54, 10 July 2021 (UTC),_1843_-_File_No._R196_-_DPLA_-_b2c0cef6826877076c81e43ea9cdf15e.jpg){kind=link}
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