gmane.org.wikimedia.commons

Desktop upload tool

Platonides — 2012-05-25T15:47:50

As some of you are already aware, I'm doing for this GSoC a Desktop tool
for conveniently uploading images to commons.
 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.wikilovesmonuments/2641

How can you help with this?

a) Propose a cool name for this tool


b) Suggest new functionalities/requisites
Either on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Platonides/GSOC_proposal or
in this thread.


c) Volunteer for testing the program and giving early feedback
(please reply directly to avoid spamming the mailing list with "I can
test it, too")

New stats for Commons

Erik Moeller — 2012-05-18T01:38:49

Hi all,

Erik Zachte has compiled some new statistics for Wikimedia Commons.
Previously, WikiStats primarily captured the standard metrics (editing
activity etc.). Since Commons is first and foremost about media, those
metrics weren't as useful to see trends in activity. You can see the
new numbers starting here:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/TablesWikipediaCOMMONS.htm#uploader_activity_levels

.. and they should be reliably and automatically generated going
forward. There are also some new summary graphs:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/SummaryCOMMONS.htm

Note that we can break out in both tables the impact of Upload Wizard.
The numbers show that the growth rate of Commons increased very
significantly after UW was enabled in May 2011. The number of
contributors grew by about 25% from March 2011 to March 2012, compared
with ~12% in the prior year.

The numbers also clearly show the impact of "Wiki Loves Monuments" in
terms of the number of uploaders -- in September 2011, 22642 people
uploaded at least one file to Commons, a huge jump from the previous
month (16869). The number of uploaders quickly returned to previous
levels, but it's fantastic to see that a single event can bring in so
many new people.

Erik's working on some additional stats, but I wanted to share this
date with you. He's also going to write a blog post about this new
data. Please report any oddities or inconsistencies directly to him.

I also want to give a shout-out to Bryan Tong Minh who's been
maintaining the incredibly useful commons-stats here:
https://toolserver.org/~bryan/stats/ - which previously were my
primary source of relevant data (and there are still some stats there
that don't exist anywhere else).

Cheers,
Erik

UploadWizard: Batch copying of metadata

Erik Moeller — 2012-05-16T21:30:47

As of the deployment of the wmf3 branch today, Upload Wizard has a new
feature that lets you copy the metadata of the first file to the
entire batch (you can pick which parts of the metadata you want to
copy). This should be helpful for users regularly uploading large
batches.

To use it, upload a batch of more than one file through
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard and use the
"Copy information to all uploads below" menu on the first upload.

Please report bugs in BugZilla or use the feedback page to share more
detailed comments:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload_Wizard_feedback

Note that the feature tries to be clever about the numbering of the
first file -- if there's a number with less than four digits in the
file already, it increments it; otherwise it adds and increments "01".
If you're uploading a file with a number in the name that should not
be incremented, like a street address, but still want to auto-number
all uploads, just add "01" -- it will always increase the rightmost
number. We'll see if we're being too clever here and may revert to
just stupidly adding "01" to the title.

Cheers,
Erik

LOC access needed

とある白い猫 — 2012-05-12T12:05:55

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boys_from_the_Turkish_orphanage_at_Ezerum_waiting_for_the_coming_of_General_Harbord%27s_party_at_Ezerum,_Turkey_(1919-11-25).jpg


Could someone recover the higher quality version from LOC?
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003674938/ It currently has an ugly cobis
watermark. A user asked me to fix this issue but I lack access to LOC.

  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
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Help test chunked uploading

Erik Moeller — 2012-05-04T03:16:07

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-uploads

There's a new user preference "chunked uploads for files over 1 MB"
for Upload Wizard.

The intent of this feature is to reliably transfer large files,
mitigating connection reliability issues. This will enable us to raise
the file size limit for all users.

Please help test this feature and report issues (performance, file
corruption, errors, etc.). The carrot is that with this preference
enabled, you can upload files <500 MB today (as opposed to <100 MB)
:-)

The feature currently only works with Upload Wizard.

More information:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Chunked_uploads

Please report bugs on the talk page or against UploadWizard in Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions&component=UploadWizard

[Wikimedia-l] [Commons-POTY-l] 10th anniversary of Wikimedia Commons

とある白い猫 — 2012-04-17T21:09:39

Commons will be celebrating its 10th anniversary on 7 September 2014 and I
feel this warrants a special occasion. We have about 1.5 years to prepare
if we are going to plan on something.

We already have POTY as an annual event so perhaps a "decade" event could
be something interesting to consider.

  -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
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Buzzfeed articles

Andreas Kolbe — 2012-04-08T13:00:32

Note that there have been two recent Buzzfeed articles about Commons and
Wikipedia, by Jack Stuef, who is a writer for The Onion:


1. The Epic Battle For Wikipedia's Autofellatio Page

In the underbelly of Wikipedia is an exhibitionist subculture dedicated to
one thing: Ensuring that their penis is the visual definition of penis.
Meet Jiffman, one such exhibitionist. (This article is very probably NSFW.)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jackstuef/inside-the-seedy-world-of-wikipedia-exhibitionism

A shorter version of this article is also available in French:

Autofellation: le combat d’un exhibitionniste pour illustrer la page de
Wikipedia

http://www.slate.fr/lien/52805/autofellation-wikipedia


2. Wikipedia's Kiddie Porn Problem

Wikipedia's self-policing isn't working.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jackstuef/its-almost-impossible-to-get-kiddie-porn-off-wiki

A shorter summary of this story is also on Gizmodo:

Why Is It So Hard to Get Kiddie Porn Off of Wikipedia?

http://gizmodo.com/5899532/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-kiddie-porn-off-of-wikipedia


For those interested, there are related discussions on Wikipediocracy.com:

in the News and Media forum –
http://www.wikipediocracy.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=6

in the Sexualisation forum –
http://www.wikipediocracy.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=15


Andreas
(I'm a moderator on Wikipediocracy, posting with the handle HRIP7.)
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Creative Commons licenses v4 drafts available

David Gerard — 2012-04-06T15:34:47

https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/32157

The fussy buggers of commons-l need to get nitpicking ...


- d.

Call for POTY volunteers and translators

Mono — 2012-04-06T02:29:32

Hello Wikimedians,

On behalf of the 2011 POTY committee, I'd like to invite you to join the
Commons Picture of the Year (POTY) Committee. A volunteer-led contest,
Picture of the Year is run by an organizing committee of Wikimedians. Since
its inception in 2006, thousands of photos from people all over the world
have been selected as Featured Pictures, and all of them are free for
anyone in the world to reuse, remix and share. POTY is one of Wikimedia's
most prominent events.

The committee currently has several dedicated members, but we're looking
for some more help. Last year, the committee counted 2,463 votes from
Wikimedians! There are lots of ways to help out, including helping set up
contest pages, posting messages in relevant locations, *translating
interface messages,* assisting voters, and counting votes. We want to make
POTY 2011 accessible to as many people as possible, so translating pages is
a priority.

We're looking for a handful of experienced and dedicated users. Together,
we'll be able to run one of the most successful POTY contests ever. If
you're interested in helping out, *please fill out this
form<http://pictureoftheyear.wufoo.com/forms/picture-of-the-year-2011-committee/>
* and we'll get in touch with you. You can also keep up with the POTY 2011
contest on Twitter <http://twitter.com/commonsPOTY>, in the #poty2011 IRC
channel on Freenode<http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=poty2011&uio=MTE9MTMz98>,
or by visiting the POTY page on the Wikimedia
Commons<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:POTY/2011>.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Thank you for your consideration,

User:Mono
Coordinator
POTY 2011
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Possibility of broken upload tools

Bryan Tong Minh — 2012-03-22T19:53:31

Hi all,


As some you may remember, two years ago all upload tools to Commons
broke when changes to the upload interface were made. These changes
were reverted [1]. However, as it turned out that this had security
implications, the restrictions have been put back into place [2].
If you use an upload tool that used to work but doesn't anymore, this
might be the cause.


Bryan

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/56793
[2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35317

Proposal to serve H.264 video

David Gerard — 2012-03-22T00:06:00

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_video_codec_policy


- d.

Pics on Facebook

Alhen — 2012-03-21T23:07:11

Will it be terribly bad to post Commons pictures on Facebook? User
jduranboger had the idea to promote Wikimedia Bolivia by posting a
different picture about Bolivia every week. Take a look at it here[1].

So, my question is if by doing this we fulfill the terms of cc-by-sa
3.0 or is there a way to post facebook pages providing another way to
mention the author and the terms of the licence.

Greetings

Alhen

1. http://www.facebook.com/wikimediabolivia

< at >alhen_
alhen at wikipedia, wikihow, wikispaces, and most places.
Promotor de Wikimedia Bolivia
00-591-79592235

Deadline for Wikimania submissions is Sunday

aude — 2012-03-16T02:26:53

Reminder to get your Wikimania program submissions in soon!

The deadline for submissions is Sunday, March 18 at 11:59 (San Francisco)
Pacific Daylight Time (or 06:59 UTC on 19 March 2012).

We seek submissions for presentations, workshops, panels, and other types
of sessions.

Topics may include anything related to Wikipedia, MediaWiki & tech (e.g.
mobile), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons and other sister projects,
OpenStreetMap, third-party wikis (e.g. WikiHow), wikis in business,
government, etc., civic & local wikis, GLAM-wiki and other cultural
outreach initiatives, education outreach, research into wikis and
collaboration, and more. These topics are just suggestions.

You can view the call for participation and make submissions here:

http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions

Cheers,
Katie

Personality rights

Andreas Kolbe — 2012-03-11T04:03:35

Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation Board published the following
Resolution:


---o0o---

The Wikimedia Foundation Board affirms the value of freely licensed
content, and we pay special attention to the provenance of this content. We
also value the right to privacy, for our editors and readers as well as on
our projects. Policies of notability have been crafted on the projects to
limit unbalanced coverage of subjects, and we have affirmed the need to
take into account human dignity and respect for personal privacy when
publishing biographies of living persons.

However, these concerns are not always taken into account with regards to
media, including photographs and videos, which may be released under a free
license although they portray identifiable living persons in a private
place or situation without permission. We feel that it is important and
ethical to obtain subject consent for the use of such media, in line with
our special mission as an educational and free project.* We feel that
seeking consent from an image's subject is especially important in light of
the proliferation of uploaded photographs from other sources, such as
Flickr, where provenance is difficult to trace and subject consent
difficult to verify.*

In alignment with these principles, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to:

   - Strengthen and enforce the current Commons guideline on photographs of
   identifiable
people<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people>
with
   the goal of requiring evidence of consent from the subject of media,
   including photographs and videos, when so required under the guideline. The
   evidence of consent would usually consist of an affirmation from the
   uploader of the media, and such consent would usually be required from
   identifiable subjects in a photograph or video taken in a private place.
   This guideline has been longstanding, though it has not been applied
   consistently.
   - Ensure that all projects that host media have policies in place
   regarding the treatment of images of identifiable living people in private
   situations.
   - Treat any person who has a complaint about images of themselves hosted
   on our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encourage others
   to do the same.


Approved 10-0.
---o0o---

Now, I am aware of a particular set of photographs on Commons, taken in a
private situation. They were taken from Flickr by an anonymous contributor
and uploaded to Commons. The images are no longer available on Flickr,
having been removed long ago.Over the past year, the photographer has
requested several times via OTRS that Commons delete these images. He said
that the subjects could not understand how these images of them ended up on
Commons, and were aghast to find them there. They were never meant to be
released publicly. According to the deletion discussions, OTRS verified
that the person making the request was indeed the owner of the Flickr
account.
Yet Commons administrators have consistently, through half a dozen deletion
discussions, refused to delete the images, disregarding the objections of
isolated editors who said that hosting the images in the clear absence of
subject consent runs counter to policy. Closing admins' argument has been
that licenses once granted cannot be revoked.
Yet according to the above resolution, Commons should not be hosting these
images. Not only was consent not obtained – an endemic situation – the
images are kept even though consent has been expressly denied.Why are these
images still on the Wikimedia Foundation server?
I am happy to pass further details on to any WMF staff, steward or Commons
bureaucrat who is willing and able to review the deletion requests and OTRS
communications, and remove the images permanently. Andreas
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please remove me from your email list

norman mackay — 2012-02-28T07:48:43

The categorisation backlog

WereSpielChequers — 2012-02-27T07:40:31

In case anyone on this list isn't aware of it, we have a very large
categorisation backlog on Commons. The Geograph load of UK images alone
includes hundreds of thousands of uncategorised images, and as many only
categorised by bot.

However there are some recently improved tools out there that people may
not be aware of, so I thought I'd email the United Kingdom and Commons
lists to make sure everyone knew about the changes. The UK mailing list is
relevant because we have a very large part of the Common categorisation
backlog, and it has come up as a problem for our Wiki loves monuments plan.

There have been two major enhancements to Catalot in the last few weeks.

It now has an autoprompt/complete feature similar to Hotcat to make it much
easier to add categories, and crucially for our Geograph backlog, it is now
possible to use  Cata a lot on uncategorised Geograph images such as in the
categories in
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_the_Geograph_British_Isles_project_needing_categories_by_grid_square(Ok
you have to copy rather than move as you are replacing a template with
a category rather than moving from one category to another).

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot


The other big change is that Rillke has written some code to change the way
that Hotcat works, so that if you open an a Geograph image that needs its
categories checked you can confirm the categories eiter with one click or
by using Hotcat to ad or remove a category. Previously Hotcat would remove
the Geograph uncategorised template but not the partially categorised
template, so if bots  had added some categories you couldn't remove the
cats need review template other than by editing. The Rillke's js code can
be accessed by installing importScript('User:Rillke/checkCat.js');

Details at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HJ_Mitchell#Check-categories-autoremoval_when_categorizing_with_HotCat

I've been using it, it works well and is many times quicker than confirming
categories manually. If everyone who is active on Commons installs it I
think we'll see the backlog reduce quite noticeably.

Regards

WereSpielChequers
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Wikimania scholarship deadline: Feb 16

aude — 2012-02-14T04:28:56

Reminder that the deadline to apply for a Wikimania 2012 travel scholarship
is February 16 (23:59 UTC).  We encourage you to apply!

http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships

Full travel scholarships, funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and chapters
(France, UK, Israel, Austria), will cover transportation, hostel
accommodations, and conference registration. Partial scholarships are also
offered by WMF (and Wikimedia Hungary).

Wikimania 2012 will take place July 12-15 at the George Washington
University in Washington, DC.  The call for participation is also open now
(deadline: March 18), and registration is open.

Cheers,
Katie
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Remove from mailing list

norman mackay — 2012-02-13T02:47:27

Please remove my email from your mailing list

Remove from Mailing List

norman mackay — 2012-02-09T04:31:10

Please remove me from the Wikimedia mailing list

Call for nominations! Steward Elections 2012

Tanvir Rahman — 2012-01-15T00:10:59

Hello everyone,

I am pleased to announce the beginning of Steward Election 2012 [1]. We are
now taking nominations from eligible candidates. Interested candidates can
check their eligibility and procedure to submit the nomination on the
guidelines page [2]. We are open to candidate submissions till January 28,
2012, 23:59 (UTC). Questions to the candidates can be submitted until
February 6, 2012, 23:59 (UTC). Guidelines about questioning can also be
found on our guidelines page [2].

This time we are also arranging the confirmation of existing stewards [3].
But the confirmation will begin on February 8, and will finish on February
27, 2012.

Please remember, the voting has not yet begun and will be not until
February 8, 2012, 00:00 (UTC). We will poke you once again when the voting
start.

As you all know steward election is a global event, so we need help from
volunteers to translate necessary pages into languages they speak. For
those who want to help us out with translation, please see our translation
portal [4]. And if you have any queries related to translation or anything
related to the election, you can ask us on the talk page [5]. Alternatively
you are free to poke us on IRC channel #wikimedia-stewards-elections.

For those who are a little bit surprised to see another election in few
months, I want to let you know that previous one (in September-October of
2011) was a special one which we arranged in need. This is the regular one
to elect new stewards and to confirm existing ones.

Please feel free to forward this e-mail to any list if you think it will be
useful. :-)

Regards,
Tanvir Rahman
Wikitanvir on Wikimedia
(On behalf of the Election Committee.)

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Guidelines
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Confirm/2012/en
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Translation
[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stewards/Elections_2012
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Wikimedia Poland's travelling POTY exhibition movessouth

Tomasz Kozłowski — 2012-01-14T17:35:04

Dear all,
I am delighted to announce that the first-ever travelling POTY pictures 
exhibition, organised by Wikimedia Poland, is moving to yet another 
Polish city. Starting next Wednesday, January 18, 16 images chosen in 
the annual POTY contests are going to be shown at the Municipal Public 
Library in [[Bytom]] in the south, less than 90 km from the Czech Polish 
border.

As some of you may recall, the exhibition premièred during the 10th 
anniversary of the Polish Wikipedia conference, held in Poznań last 
September, having been visited by a few hundred visitors in just two 
weeks. Our first stop outside Poznań was Przystanek Książka, one of 
Warsaw's media libraries, where the exhibition was shown from November 
28, 2011 to January 11, 2012, and has been visited by over a thousand 
visitors (after making it to the main page of Gazeta.pl, one of Poland's 
most popular news sites)!

With high hopes, we are now moving to Bytom, where the pictures are 
going to be showcased until February 18. The opening of the exhibition 
will be accompanied by a public lecture on Polish Wikipedia and a 
Wikipedia editing workshop for 50+ people, led by Wikimedian Paweł 
Marynowski ([[user:Yarl]]).

For those of you currently living in the south of Poland or planning to 
visit the Upper Silesia Metroplex (e.g. Katowice) in the upcoming weeks: 
the library is located at 3 Jan III Sobieski Square in Bytom, just 400 
metres north of Bytom Market Square, with direct public transport from 
Katowice (bus lines "820" and "830") and is open on working days from 8 
AM until 7 PM (8 AM-3 PM on Saturdays).

We are still looking for more organisations and institutions willing to 
hold the exhibition – and if there's anyone from the neighbouring 
(European) countries willing to get involved (we are particularly 
looking at our WMCEE friends now :)), feel free to approach me at 
<tomasz.kozlowski < at > wikimedia.pl>.

Regards,