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FPCs needing feedback


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Bulbs for light tent

lamps available for my light tent

I have come to the conclusion that I need to have better control over my lighting and am putting together a light tent. As a first attempt, I picked up a $12 popup on eBay. I have some clamp on desk lamp lighting fixtures. I have read an online DIY guide and I just need to understand what is meant by “Full Spectrum” light bulbs. I have some 60watt soft white bulbs. Are these full spectrum?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Restorationists: File:Inflatable habitat s89 20084.jpg

I just found File:Inflatable habitat s89 20084.jpg when I was going through a portal. It's fun looking, large enough to be an FP, and only has some slight damage (as best as I can tell). Just throwing it out there. Cheers, Sven Manguard Wha? 20:03, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also: File:Moon colony with rover.jpeg. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:04, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

These would be excellent choices for new restorationists - outside of the black sky having been worn down by greasy fingers on the left edge of the inflatable image, which will require a little care, but not much, it's all just simple dust specks and the occasional scratch, both of which can be easily fixed with the clone tool if you zoom in enough and use a suitably-sized clone stamp. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:28, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder, how does one tell dust specks and stars apart? --125.25.147.169 (talk) 15:55, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You can tell when they're on buildings and people. Leave anything plausible alone, of course. =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:31, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Would this be FP quality?

I just came across File:Male human head louse.jpg and think it's rather intriguing. I have no idea of how photo quality is judged, though. There seems to be some ghosting which is probably hard to avoid at such magnifications, and the crop is rather tight on the right. Does this have FP potential? Also, it's currently inconvenient for me to log in so if someone thinks this pic has a good chance it'd be great if they could help nominate it. Thanks. --125.25.147.169 (talk) 15:51, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd certainly support it, and it shows the characteristic grabbing of the hairs very well. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:50, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
 Nominated. Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:44, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/La Dame aux camélias

This has had a little additional editing by Bransmeister, so I'd appreciate if people'd have another look. =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:02, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bicycles

The new file

I thought there was potential in Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Bicycle diagram if only some of the issues could be ironed out. I've now done that an uploaded an edit to File:Bicycle diagram-en (edit).svg. However, I haven't put it in articles yet, as I wanted to confirm people thought it was an improvement (I think this is unlikely to be universal). I went through discerning what about each oppose could be easily changed, and did that. There's a change list in the file description. Thoughts? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:01, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At first glance I immediately noticed that the rims are not circular and are uneven width, as are the tyres, and the spokes are unevenly spaced. Otherwise it looks okay. Matthewedwards (talk · contribs) 19:51, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, the tyres shouldn't be circular - they should be partially flattened at the bottom. Other issues hold. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:08, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Today's POTD

Does anyone else see a stitching error in the current POTD? To me it looks like there's one between the second and third peaks from the left--a ghost of the mountain visible in the sky. Am I wrong? If others concur, I'll try to do a quick edit, but then what? Would we forget about POTD and start a normal Delist and Replace, or is it worth pinging Howcheng for emergency action? I'm also willing to accept that I'm just seeing it wrong, since there was no mention in the original nomination. Thoughts? Chick Bowen 00:22, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I did a rough edit if it helps make clear what I mean. Chick Bowen 00:39, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't know what is supposed to be done in such a case, but just thought I should mention that there are quite a few errors and your edit has missed some just to the right of the ones you fixed. --Muhammad(talk) 01:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Macro images

I am trying to deterimine what factors are keeping me from producing FP quality images. Since my best contributions to WP will probably be basketball, I have two bodies (Canon Rebel T3i and Canon Rebel T4i). Would I be able to produce FP quality images if instead I put all my money in one Canon EOS 7D, which costs the same as my two bodies combined? Is it my lenses? I don't have any macro lenses and have been working with EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM and Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens. Is it my accessories such as tripods, flashes and a light tent purchased on eBay? My Manfrotto 190XProL seems stable enough to me. I am satisfied with my Speedlite 430 EX II. Is it impossible to do consistent FP level work with my equipment or is it just me?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 23:22, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If your doing basketball photography, provided you don't have press access getting you right courtside, then you'd need fairly expensive lenses for closeups... check out this article: [1]. The bodies should be fine, I think. Remember with action shots, more pictures the better, pretend your camera is a video camera and just hold down the shutter and shoot as fast as possible.. lol — raekyt 08:08, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
By fast as possible do you mean fps or shutter speed?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:26, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For sports photography, both. The big ass lenses you see the pro camera people with along the side-lines, they're very large apature lenses that allow them to take faster shutter speed photos in lower light, and are generally stupidly expensive. If you want to do good sports photography, then you need to learn about these kinds of lenses, there are some larger apature lenses that are not multi-grand expenditures. And for rapid-fire taking pictures, more pictures you take more likelyhood of getting a good one. — raekyt 20:25, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The main reason keeping your from producing FP quality macro images is technique. If you are serious about producing good close-up product images, then a macro lens and perhaps some lighting equipment would make a difference. But you need to learn more and read more - esp about lighting - and practice lots. The camera is most definitely not the problem here. There is zero difference in image quality between your T3i and T4i so I hope you didn't buy the latter hoping to take better pictures. And I don't know why you think buying the out-of-date 7D would improve your picture quality. Moving up to a prosumer camera will give you improvements to the exposure and focus systems that may improve your hit-rate of successful pictures, but don't in themselves equal higher quality images. But there are times in the product release cycles, like now, when such cameras are lagging behind the latest consumer models in terms of sensor tech. And the speed and accuracy of focussing is determined by both the camera and the lens, so buying a better camera and sticking a cheap kit lens on it makes no sense. Your T4i is a fine camera and we have plenty FPs taken with lower spec cameras.
My 2p: buy kit because you want to take and enjoy the pictures that require it, not in order to get an FP. Colin°Talk 09:55, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I bought the 2nd body (as well as a monopod, tripod, 40mm pancake, 430EX II speedlight, larger SD cards and a new bag) when a one-time windfall enabled me to double my camera equipment budget. The budget only has $77.67 left, so I won't be buying much new stuff for a while. The 2nd body was chosen mainly because i jumped me from 3.7 fps to 5.0 fps, which is important for basketball. I decided not to sell the first body for situations where I might be on one end of the court and need different lenses for the near and far courts.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:38, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I also think technique is honestly the issue here. The most recent focus stacked version had a weird angle. The white balance was off. The lens was dirty. The focal length was too short imo. The version before that combined with maybe a few hundred pixels in margin and focus stacking would be perfect. There have been many featured pictures taken with quite humble equipment. I'd sell one body though - pointless having two so similar. The 7D is a better body than the t4i for it's ergonomics, durability and fast action capabilities. But the sensor is the same as your bodies anyway. At any rate, upgrading to a newer crop sensor wouldn't improve your photos at all. Improvements to high iso capability and the like are totally irrelevant in an iso 100, tripod mounted, lighting controlled studio situation. Spend your money on lenses (a few good ones, not loads of mediocre ones) or lighting gear - they don't depreciate as quickly. JJ Harrison (talk) 12:28, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, there are plenty of featured pictures taken with both of your lenses. JJ Harrison (talk) 12:30, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Criterion 7 clarification

Propose changing the start of Criterion 7 from "Has a descriptive, informative and complete file description." to "Has a descriptive, informative and complete file description in English." This does not prohibit additional descriptions in other languages, but since we're on English Wikipedia at least one of the descriptions should be in English if the photo is to be featured here. --Pine✉ 18:09, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • The image page absolutely needs to be in English for enwiki for EV reasons, in particular the description section. Featured content is meant to be showcasing our best work, and they're hardly doing that if an English speaking person can't read them. Of course it can also have other language versions too, it's just that one has to be in English. The actual filename isn't so important as you don't need to be able to read that if an English description is provided, and given that the images are generally sourced from Commons which is a multilingual repository and it doesn't need multiple versions of the file named in each language. Nominators should be checking this prior to nomination, it's pretty straightforward, but there seems to be a whole raft of noms going through atm not satisfying this (I just tagged another three). Whether it needs to be stated in the criteria I'm not sure, rather seems like stating the obvious, but given my previous statement maybe it's not so obvious, so if it helps make things clearer for people... --jjron (talk) 14:14, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
YesY Done This seems uncontroversial and the last contribution to this discussion was ten days ago. I made the following diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AFeatured_picture_criteria&diff=538777566&oldid=514075536. --Pine✉ 21:53, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Focus stack vs. Multi Shot Noise Reduction

A couple weeks ago, you guys introduced me to a technique called focus stacking. I was speaking with Canon Technical support tonight and someone introduced me to multi shot noise reduction. The canon manual does not really explain what the technique is. If it isn't too much trouble, can someone explain the difference between focus stacking and multi shot noise reduction.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:01, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it is similar to the "multiframe noise reduction" (aka "hand-held twilight") in my Sony camera. See this review for examples. The camera takes several (e.g., six) shots in rapid succession, aligns the images to cope with you moving slightly, and then averages out the pixels. Provided the subject is stationary, the only difference between the frames should be shot noise, which is random. The manufacturer's implementation will vary in how well they cope with moving subjects without ghosting. You can do the same on your computer by taking several identical shots and processing with enfuse. It is almost the opposite of focus stacking, which aims to extract detail unique to each frame.
I experimented with it on my camera. It does indeed produce lower-noise JPG images than would normally be possible (where the alternative is increasing the ISO). Unfortunately, Lightroom does a much better job of producing a low-noise JPG than my A33 does by itself, and I found that I could get similar images from a single higher-ISO RAW file instead. If you are taking product shots on a tripod, then this technique isn't relevant - just light the subject well and choose ISO 100. -- Colin°Talk 08:32, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nothing ever saves you from complication. As new gear makes one scenario easier, it just introduces you to another scenario in which it doesn't work. :) High ISO image quality is light-years (har-har) better than it used to be, so we can now hand-hold what used to be impossible in the days of film. But there are still many things that we can't do without a bit of trickery. Star-trails for example. The only way to get decent image quality on long star trail images is to image stack, because the sensors can't cope with shutter speeds of over about 5 minutes without filling the frame with hot pixels. A similar technique (but seemingly not quite the same) in astrophotography is dark frame subtraction. You take a long exposure photo (or series, if star trailing), and then take another photo with the same shutter speed, except with the lens cap on. That takes a measurement of the innate sensor noise of the camera at that moment in time (which is dependent on temperature and a few other factors). You can then go back to your PC later on and 'remove' the dark frame noise from the other image(s), which cleans up the photo's long exposure noise substantially. Better than using noise reduction software, because it's the sensor's unique 'noise signature' for the given conditions. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 12:45, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your "dark frame subtraction" is a manual version of "long exposure noise reduction" where the camera automatically takes another picture of equal length but with the shutter closed whenever the exposure length is greater than one second. This technique/feature removes fixed-pattern noise but not shot noise. I can configure my camera to turn this feature on or off, and unlike multi-frame noise reduction it applies directly to the RAW file rather than just JPGs. However, for star trails it wouldn't be any use as you'd have a long gap between each trail segment -- so Diliff's manual version is needed to apply to all the frames. Colin°Talk 12:54, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As you are shooting JPGs you are somewhat at the mercy of the camera. Make sure you've set your JPG quality settings to the highest you can and turn down any noise-reduction settings to see if that helps. Those images look soft rather than noisy. The softness may be a combination of several things. Firstly at increasingly high iso, the camera will be using fairly aggressive noise reduction. If you shoot RAW then you can control the amount afterwards to taste. Any out-of-focus areas show up noise more than in-focus areas, so not getting the focus spot on can be an issue. Also your lens won't be at its sharpest wide-open. Stop down a little and it will sharpen up -- but you have to balance that against higher iso or longer exposure. I've not done any sports photography but wonder if you can get away with 1/500 rather than 1/1000? There is a reason that professional sports photographers shoot with full-frame cameras and a lens the size of your thigh: a huge amount of light hitting a big sensor. Console yourself that some pro spots photos you see probably look pants at 100% too -- you only see a downsampled vesion on a web page or in a grainy newspaper. -- Colin°Talk 15:09, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What is Canon customer support thinking when he says to turn up noise reduction? You are telling me to turn it down. Why? P.S. what does "look pants at 100%" mean?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:08, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Pants is UK English slang; it's roughly equivalent in meaning to – though somewhat less formal than – rubbish. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:20, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I might add that rubbish is also UK vernacular, if not slang, although somewhat easier to figure out. Saffron Blaze (talk) 12:49, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Notifying the Video Game project

There seems to be an increase of video game-related pictures being promoted to Featured status and yet its hard to have it noticed for the project since there no notification on when they are up. I just want to make sure that there can be more announcements for these nominations in the future. GamerPro64 16:26, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for letting us know. I don't think it is standard practice here to notify any Wikiprojects of nominations, but it's a good idea. Jujutacular (talk) 23:49, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
IF a bot can do it somehow, then it would be ok, but I doubt anyone would do it due to time constraints otherwise. Probably be good idea to increase participation if we did notify relevant wiki-projects though (and the article's talk pages that the picture is on). — raekyt 23:16, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To add a concern though, if we did do this, then we'd have to become pretty strict about disqualifying things if they fail criteria, right now we sorta fudge things a bit, and let it drag on until it closes nautrually if it fails, but if we're advertising alot of invested parties that may vote because they like an image irregardless of promotion criteria, then the regulars would need to step in and procedurally close things. — raekyt 23:19, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, do remember that the criteria do have exceptions. We shouldn't (for example) disqualify a video game shot that someone gets free licensed because the game's maximum resolution is less than 1500x1500. There can be reasonable discussion about whether something is an exception in some cases, and we should let such discussions happen. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:27, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm aware of the exceptions, but I was talking more broadly than just this one project, if we started notifying all relevant projects/pages of a new nomination, there may be people who don't know the criteria coming and voting for things that shouldn't pass due to failing criteria just because they like it or have invested interests in it... — raekyt 00:01, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
True. But perhaps if we just ask any notifications - outside of the institutionalised ones like WT:MILHIST - include a link to WP:Featured picture criteria it'd work. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds strongly like Wikipedia:Canvassing to me, which has been highly frowned upon here in the past. There's a reason we don't notify 'interested' wikiprojects and other parties, and that's because we've seen disastrous consequences in the past when they've flooded a nomination with unjustified votes (anyone else remember the stoushes over the Wikipe-tan nominations for example?). Now that promotions have tipped very strongly towards simple vote counting as opposed to the older technique with more judgement made by closers to evaluate arguments, there would be little to prevent this getting out of hand. I therefore strongly oppose this being done in any form. --jjron (talk) 14:01, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CANVAS is a bad-faith attempt to skew consensus by notifying only people who you think will support your position. Neutrally notifying all relevant parties, isn't canvasing. It's quite common and happens all the time. — raekyt 15:21, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed! If we simply worded every notification with a boiler plate paragraph about things to keep in mind when commenting at FPC, I think this could be useful. For example, we might have avoided this incident if the relevant projects had been notified. Jujutacular (talk) 18:28, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Whilst more participation would be great, notifying wikiprojects would skew the process too much in my view, particularly with very popular projects. JJ Harrison (talk) 02:48, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. The whole point is that people in a wikiproject are more likely to support the nomination without particular concern to the criteria (have seen it happen many times), which is what makes it a form of canvassing. I know this is not always the case, and indeed sometimes they can offer a valuable input and counterpoint to a nomination, a recent example being Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/High Pressure Area over the Great Australian Bight. On the other hand they can also bring across wikiproject infighting as well, which I think was also evident in that particular example. (And re the Ebony Thomas case, this is an example where nominator and reviewers (and yes I was one of them) perhaps did not exercise due diligence - a simple Google image search pretty much conclusively shows this isn't her. Also a case where our 7 day rule didn't do it's job of weeding out things like this; not sure about the article usage, but from time of image upload to nomination was about 6mths, so plenty of time for someone involved in that area to click to the misidentification, and FWIW I suspect the new lead image in the article is also not her. Perhaps this also a case of where a propensity we seem to have of promoting images of lower EV as indicated by their article size/popularity needs some thought - even now this article is only a couple of hundred words long, was edited only ten times last year, and hasn't been edited in six months!). --jjron (talk) 07:46, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FPC in 2012

Anybody willing to do a 150-200 word write up for the Signpost about the state of FPC in 2012, including more unique images or patterns, please contact me. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I could, although I was on wikibreak for part of it. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:24, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We could also collect some thoughts here for Adam or whoever ends up writing it. Here are mine: in photography: 1. JJ has really raised the bar for nature photographs, and I think has had a positive influence on some of our other photographers; 2. we had more action shots of performers and athletes, and 3. after a number of broad, panoramic urban landscapes in previous years, our architectural images have moved toward very precise, high-res images of single buildings. In historical images, I think we're seeing more heavily edited images, with less tolerance for dust and damage. Oh, and the resolution criterion was raised in July, though I think that really reflected a trend in the FPC discussions going back another year or so. Chick Bowen 00:22, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't counted the exact number, but there were more than a few successful nominations of space related photography in 2012 including subjects in astronomy and space vehicles. --Pine✉ 19:23, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Main Page Today

Just saw the image on the main page. I thought it was agreed that we'd avoid controversial images like those on the main page. --Muhammad(talk) 04:32, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm biased since it was my nomination, but can you explain how it is controversial? We have had nude artwork on the front page before. This is hardly a graphic or provocative image. Chick Bowen 05:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)For reference, other nudes that have been on the main page: Wikipedia:Picture of the day/August 31, 2006, Template:POTD/2012-02-07. Selections are made on a case-by-case basis and are independent of the selection for featured status. This is probably more suitable for discussion at WT:POTD, or User talk:Howcheng or User talk:Crisco 1492. Jujutacular (talk) 05:20, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/By George, the Country Needs Me!

I'm a little surprised this hasn't had a single vote, given it passed on Commons by the Rule of the 5th day - e.g. Such overwhelming, unanimous support that it gets closed early. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:44, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't strike me as having extremely high EV for the article's it's in.... — raekyt 16:47, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How else would you illustrate the connection between St. George and Britain than by showing him being used in British patriotism? Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:22, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But we don't have an article about that specifically? It's just one of the many recruitment posters they issued, one of the earlier ones, or the first one, or if any are more notable/discussed/most widely distributed or whatever would be more EV in those articles. Only has very minor EV in Patronages of Saint George or Saint George, where it's arguably not even worth including in the second one. And again very minor EV in History of the United Kingdom during World War I, only one it could have any real EV in is Recruitment to the British Army during the First World War, and that's where I think maybe the first posters of the war for recruitment would have most EV, not just one that happens to be graphically flashy. — raekyt 04:43, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can see no reason other than disuse that this would warrant a delisting, so I figured I'd let the rest of you know about it, and hope that someone sticks this in a few articles. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:19, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could ask on M4 carbine if they want it back in the article... otherwise if no new home can be found then yea, Delist. — raekyt 18:42, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This version of the same image File:M4FiringWithCasingInAir.jpg is still used in the M4 carbine article. As best I can tell the only difference is it's been slightly cropped. I have no idea why it's being used in preference to the featured version. I'm going to revert it and we'll see if it holds. --jjron (talk) 03:08, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW it appears this replacement in the article happened on 13 Jan 2008 here. --jjron (talk) 03:58, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, a week and fifteen article edits down the track, including edits by the two main article contributors, this image remains in its place in the article. I think we can put this one to sleep for the time being. --jjron (talk) 07:57, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cute Chicks

Stylish Chicks I'm hoping to nominate this image for POD once I am able to log-in. Since this is not my image, but an editor who I admire, I do not wish to call attention or solicit any harsh critiques.-So I'm posting it here just to ask if anyone thinks this would be a good nomination?
What strikes me here is that most bird photos I've seen are taken in nature and this one has the colorful nursery/knitted pattern. The title is silly and can be changed.24.0.133.234 (talk) 18:08, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree that it would be interesting to feature pictures of animals raised in a wildlife rescue setting, but I don't know that this is the best example. The composition of the frame is a bit unbalanced, and I find the drab white-wall background to be a little boring. The image is also below the minimum resolution requirements -- see the featured picture criteria. Hope this helps :) Jujutacular (talk) 22:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That helps a lot thank-you. Below resolution is not something that I could fix but I will check to make sure that any other photos that I consider for POD are the right number and my eye is untrained to what you see as far as composition but that is prob. what other POD editors would see there too.24.0.133.234 (talk) 13:01, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I tried to resolve the problems with the composition and the background by cropping:16:9 crop 4:3 crop. The author may have a higher-resolution version. I agree that the tits and the baskets are cute, but if the photo showed more of the birds' tails it would be more encyclopedic. —rybec 02:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Size

I must have missed out on something, but is there any reason why 1000 pixels in width or height became 1500 pixels in width and height? What's with the change in the conjunction? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:21, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates/Archive 33#Proposal to change size critiera [sic]. This was originally phrased as "1500px on the shorter side," and the current wording was considered a simplification for clarity. The idea is to avoid overly skinny portraits or short and wide panoramas (like this one) that aren't truly high resolution. At least, that's my sense; I was away at the time and tried to catch up when I got back. Chick Bowen 04:33, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like a small cabal, led by Colin and Diliff pushed the issue through and bullied anyone who disagreed with them into toeing the line, see the "Respecting the Consensus" section for ample proof of that. Several nominations since the change has shown proof that despite the assertions otherwise, good nominations that before-hand would have been considered good FPC candidates are getting criticized because they fall under their own guidelines. I'll also remind everyone that the term is guideline, not rule, so hitting people over the head with it over several, or even several hundred, pixels as the only criteria for opposing should in itself be opposed. Cat-fivetc ---- 01:52, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, it's probably for the best, honestly. We can always IAR if we need to, but it's better to be bigger if we can. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:10, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm all for a larger images and in a perfect world for a guideline saying as such but people misguidedly treat the guidelines as hard rules. Maybe the better idea would be to add a line to the criteria saying that no single guideline should in itself be a reason to oppose an image, although I have to imagine that the hardliners would see that as an unacceptable loosening of the rules which would allow "inferior" images to gain FP status. Cat-fivetc ---- 03:52, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Cat-five, I ask you to strike your comments about cabal and bullying per WP:NPA and refrain from making similar comments again or you will find yourself relieved of your editing facilities. My record shows I have championed images smaller than the criteria where justified. In fact, on Commons recently, I was a lone voice defending one of JJ's bird pictures that was a bit small (largely due to the wide-aspect crop and very difficult shooting conditions with a long lens). The statement "that no single guideline should in itself be a reason to oppose an image" is nonsense. People may oppose over whatever they like, if they feel strongly about it. One of the most common reasons to oppose is that folk dislike the crop/framing, which is merely one aspect. And others are free to agree or disagree with them. And people may nominate a picture that fails any aspect of the guidelines (within reason per WP:POINT) if they feel strongly about it. And others are free to agree or disagree with them. Colin°Talk 08:39, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, I resent your threatening to have me banned, except for my calling you a cabal, which was out of line and which I apologize for, my comments were aimed at your behavior on the page not at you as users. That being said, I also should not have stated that you were bullying another user, I still think you two were unneededly harsh towards people who did not disagree with your decision, a decision you did not seem to have any inclination to even consider reconsidering but to call your behavior bullying was out of line so I apologize and I have struck that part of the comment. Cat-fivetc ---- 00:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Colin (no, not because we're leaders of a cabal) - that was completely uncalled for Cat-Five and the same cheap shot that is regularly fired at wikipedians who merely agree with each other about something and try to apply consensus to improve things here. It was discussed at length with a large number of contributors and only a very small minority had any disagreements with the proposal. Those who did disagree did not have particularly persuasive arguments IMO. Reasons why we thought so were provided and discussed. Apart from Breathe, who provided a laundry list of issues that both Colin and I responded to at length and got no further discussion in reply, and Samsara, who has shown himself over the last couple of years to be far more of a contrarian bully than Colin or I, there really wasn't any significant disagreement with the proposal. That, in my opinion, is solid consensus. And I take issue with the suggestion that we 'bullied' people into 'toeing the line', since really only Breathe and Samsara offered any real disagreement, and they did NOT change their minds - therefore nobody 'toed the line' as a result of our discussion. I also think it's disingenuous to say that images previously considered to be 'good' are now failing simply because of the image resolution change to the guidelines that took place. Expecting higher resolution was something that was already taking place in the voting community, and we simply adjusted the guidelines to match a realistic minimum standard based on what cameras were capable of producing in 2012. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 11:27, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Per my comment above, I apologize for the cheap shot. I as much as anyone understand the special meaning that has word has here on Wikipedia and even if that weren't the case it was, as you put it, a cheap shot and one that I regret making. Cat-fivetc ---- 00:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • In this case, perhaps make it explicit that are slightly under the guideline can still be considered? That's one of the reasons I preferred "or", as it took into consideration the various shapes and sizes available. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:03, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • But what other shapes does the existing guideline not cater to? Apart from panoramas, I can't think of any. And with panoramas, usually by definition they are multiple images stitched together, so the usual arguments about elitism resulting in point and shoot cameras being excluded because they can't provide the necessary definition is even less of an issue - there's nothing to stop panorama shooters from providing an image whose short edge (usually height) is the equivalent of the long edge of a single frame. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 11:16, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would not be opposed to adding to the exceptions something like "and very narrow crops (other than scenic panoramas)". This would handle both the above orchid and JJ's bird. And the bird is handled by the technical difficulty clause already. The vast, vast majority of narrow crop images are scenic panoramas, for which the standard is high and expects a decent amount of detail. Ultimately, I think sometimes folk like to argue about perceived problems than actual ones. Even with the current guidelines, anyone nominating the above orchid could simply state that they are aware it is below the resolution criteria but that the crop is tall and thin for a very good reason, so an exception should be made. Colin°Talk 11:40, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm rather surprised that that photo was voted FP actually. It's not a bad photo but the crop is awful IMO, and a more reasonable aspect ratio would have improved it. That photo could still have been shot as a vertical panorama though. I'm not saying every photo needs to be, but it could have been. I don't really accept that there's no way to avoid these low res images when the subject is static. And as Colin says, any guideline CAN be ignored if there is a fair and genuine reason for doing so. But it doesn't follow the guidelines should be adjusted to allow for these uncommon situations. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 11:46, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Or how about "Exceptions to this rule may be made where justified on a case-by-case basis, such as for historical, technically difficult or otherwise unique images" -- bold is the new text. That introduces some common-sense that some people seem unable to apply without explicit guidance, and avoid introducing a laundry-list of exceptions. Leaving aside whether that flower is an FP, there will be rare examples where a useful or artistic severe crop may be justified from a straight-from-camera photo. -- Colin°Talk 12:47, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to support the inclusion of that, but previously I didn't really think it was necessary either. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 12:55, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see absolutely no problems with that wording, that would IMO give some grounds to reply to votes that are flagrantly hardline without caring about the circumstances of the image while still allowing us to stick to the hard standard most of the time. For better or worse it may some day get to the point where we need a laundry list though, if only because leaving the rules loose and open to interpretation causes these kinds of issues to repeatedly pop up. Cat-fivetc ---- 00:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I appreciate a bigger size whenever possible; giving allowance in case to case(No further arguments on that JJ's bird here). But I see a technical error in the existing guideline (as "1500px on the shorter side"). We've so many proportions like 1:1, 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, 16:9 and even more wider. So I think a guideline specifying area (as in Commons) may be more suitable (also with allowance for rare cases). We can also include an aspect ratio clause (eg: Aspect ratio should not be bigger than 16/9 except panoramas and x/y for panoramas). JKadavoor Jee 05:50, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Using a total pixel measurement system

I realize that currently the software does not show us the current number of pixels which forces every user to do the math by hand so with that in mind I have three proposals that are more or less based on the ideas that have been discussed here. Feel free to add your own proposal or just call mine silly but at least for me having a firm idea of what the end goal is helps.

Note: I'm using X and Y as shorthand for the horizontal and vertical lengths of the image respectively

Option A: Stick with the status quo style system of x*y dimensions as the current system for lack of a better option while working through [[ Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)]] and Bugzilla to try to get a better system implemented that would at least show the total pixels on the image description page and ideally might even make it available to a variable.

Option B Implement a total pixel based system now using the new nomination template to ask the nominator to input the x,y side sizes. It would mean two extra steps for the nominator and a nice neat and easy to see template or just one line of text could quickly and easily show participants whether an image met the pixel requirements or not.

Option C Stick to the status quo system, reject change, and go back to arguing whether side x was 1 pixel too short despite the image being a panoramic or side y was too short for a tall vertical image. I don't know if we have any FP's of them at the moment but in terms of subjects the Grand Canyon and the Louvre respectively come to mind as subjects that might have problems in a strict X,Y based measurement system but would be fine in a more flexible total pixel system.

If People are up for option A or B I'm happy to take the lead on it unless someone else wants to do it. This is not a straw pool but just a way to generally organize what's been discussed. Cat-fivetc ---- 06:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I gather it is 1500px on the short size so a square 1500x1500 crop would be 2,250,000px. As someone pointed out either in the archived discussion on changing the size requirements or higher up on this page, bad crops to achieve a 1500x1500 or whatever square already fall under several other criteria to oppose if the image is visually/aesthetically unappealing and/or the encyclopedic value is hurt by too tight or too lose of a crop on one or more sides. Cat-fivetc ---- 07:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But a 2250x1500 picture (3:2 format), 2000x1500 picture (4:3 format) and 2667x1500 picture (16:9 format) are much higher in resolution than 2,250,000px. That is why I say the current criteria is (although it is simple as Colin said) not doing any justice to all works (justice means exactly equal consideration to all). I agree with your argument that we can oppose basing or other grounds if feel necessary. But that is a different point. IMHO, pictures need (except panoramas; I'm very weak on that topic) a minimum resolution of 3M in the 2000x1500 picture (4:3 format). So a square crop will have 1732px on each side and 1800x1667 for pictures in 3:2 format. JKadavoor Jee 11:37, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These other aspect ratios (with the same 1500px min dimension) are not "much higher in resolution". They have more pixels for sure but for a given picture, changing aspect involves cropping not resizing. When one downsamples an image (or didn't zoom sufficiently to begin with), then width and height are equally diminished. The word "resolution" is used carelessly in English but properly concerns sharpness and the ability to resolve fine detail (which in turn is proportional to how large the image can be displayed). So assuming the picture is focussed and sharp, measuring the shortest dimension gives you how much detail there is for a given size. Measuring the other dimension (and thus establishing the MP) only tells you what the aspect ratio is -- something that is of artistic and value concern but quite distinct from detail. Colin°Talk 18:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Any system will have images it disproportionately affects. We have a huge range of images here from square crops of flowers to long scenic panoramas to tall pictures of carpets or orchids. We also have a huge range of circumstances from "studio" macro or portrait shots to shooting with a 500mm lens on the high seas. We also have to make sure the system doesn't unnecessarily inconvenience nominators or reviewers -- hence for now the 1500px system is easier than a MP system. I think the px system is fairer since the MP increase/decrease with the square of the side. So, even a moderate crop can result in significantly lower MP. On the other hand panoramas can achieve high MP even if one dimension is very low and below the levels of detail we've come to expect. Since px/MP are a proxy for image detail and printed height/width, a px threshold is in proportion to this detail or size whereas a MP threshold is not.
The issues of good/bad/appropriate aspect ratios are quite separate from size thresholds. I hope people are reasonable enough that if the best crop for an image is 1450px then not to demand a little more sky/sea to get it over the threshold.
So I feel the current system is easy to understand and judge. I'm not aware of anyone arguing over 1px here or there, but if there are image that are borderline and are being judged unfairly, then feel free to post a request here for additional comments. Colin°Talk 08:50, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who recently nominated an image slightly under size (but pretty much unavailable in any larger size for any practical purpose) and had it pass, I think that appropriate exceptions are being made. Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:33, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree here with Adam, we've recently made exceptions, and also some with JJ's birds. What exactly is WRONG with the current version? If total pixel count isn't visible on the image page then it's to much of a burden on the end-user I think to figure out if their image meets our minimum requirements or not, so until that's added, if ever, we can just forget that as a requirement imho. As for the size of 1500, I always advocate for larger, since I think a FP should be able to be used for more than just web display, this resource (Wikipedia) allows for all kinds of uses, one being PRINT, and I think FP's should be, as being our best work, printable at 300dpi in a 4 color process and look good and not be thumbnail. — raekyt 17:26, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly; encourage high resolution whenever possible, consider case-to-case generously. JKadavoor Jee 04:18, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]


//
// Calculate Megapixels on image pages
//
function calculateMegapixels() {
 var data = $('.fileInfo').text();
 pixel_filter = /([\d,]+) × ([\d,]+)/;
 if(pixel_filter.test(data)) {
  pixel_filter.exec(data);
  var wt = RegExp.$1, ht = RegExp.$2
    , w = parseFloat( wt.replace(/,/,'') )
    , h = parseFloat( ht.replace(/,/,'') );
  $('.fileInfo').append( $('<span></span>').text(' (' + ((w*h)/(1024.0*1024.0)).toFixed(2) + ' Megapixel)' ) );
 }
}
if( wgAction == 'view' && wgNamespaceNumber == 6 ) $j(document).ready(calculateMegapixels);

There you are. --Dschwen 18:10, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Now get it added automaticly to every image description page or into MediaWiki... It's not that we can't make a script to do it, it's that the end-user, the average-joe doesn't have access to that, and we shouldn't require them to add scripts to be able to tell if their pictures qualify or not. — raekyt 15:13, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've just popped that script into my scripts here and on Commons. Thanks. However, I'm certain the calculation is a simply /1,000,000 and not the 1024x1024 number used for bytes. The fact that MP ratings on cameras don't exactly match the multiple of the largest image size is due pixels lost round the edge of the sensor, plus some generous marketing rounding. Colin°Talk 19:26, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Well, I didn't want to use Marketingmegapixels, but the real stuff. It feels like a cheap attempt to game the system to insist that your 1000x1000 image meets a 1MP requirement. --Dschwen 21:34, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? A megapixel is a million pixels. This isn't one of those contexts where e.g. 'mega-' is erroneously used to mean 2^20 of something by convention. That mostly happens with disk space as counted by computer software. Your script measures mebipixels. :P JJ Harrison (talk) 03:17, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing "real" about 1024. Just because computer memory is measured that weird way doesn't mean other systems are. I haven't found any sources to support the idea that megapixels are anything other than 1,000,000 pixels. Colin°Talk 19:15, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When I grew up a mega still was 2^20, but if you young whippersnappers insist it on being 10^6 so be it ;-). --Dschwen 20:53, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You were lucky, when I were a lad there was no mega of anything - memory, disk or pixels. In fact, my camera took no batteries. Colin°Talk 21:12, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not even for the meter? —rybec 01:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. It had a selenium cell on the front that detected light levels. You had to turn a knob to line up a little loop with the meter's dial and then read off the appropriate shutter-speed/aperture combination. By then your subject had got bored and wandered off. Colin°Talk 16:41, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My first real camera took two button cells and they lasted over a year. But I guess Colin wins this "age pi$$ing contest" ;-) --Dschwen 16:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Even if we don't change any standards here, maybe it should be suggested, wherever the appropriate place to suggest it is, that this be added to the common js file because it's an unobtrusive, helpful, and useful bit of extra information to have. Even if nothing official is ever done with it, it's a nice bit of extra information to have and more people than just read this talk page might appreciate it. Cat-fivetc ---- 00:54, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Already FP, but a sharper, larger image?

I just came across a public domain image that's already FP, but it's 2.89 times larger in size. The colors are the same and the crop is the same. How should I go about handling this: do I upload the larger image and nominate it/delist-nom the original? Or should I just upload the new image over the FP image? Or what? Thanks! – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 03:04, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I should add that this is an FP across-the-board image (Commons, various languages, you name it), and my source is different and the original image is different in that mine is the original photograph, the current FP is a crop of a press release/publicity handout. – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 03:08, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Commons has a pretty strict rule against uploading over the top of a featured picture. Thus, you'll have to go through the delist process (file a single nomination under the delist section, and then add the new image and make your own vote "delist and replace." This should be straightforward, although unfortunately delist nominations have been poorly attended lately. Chick Bowen 03:40, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Chick. I'll do that. It didn't seem like saving-over would be the right thing. – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 05:11, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Don't forget the "other versions" field. —rybec 00:57, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Abuse of FP urgents

I'm not at all happy about this edit to the FP Urgents. Nominators should not be allowed to promote their own images as urgent, particularly when they've had plenty discussion (10 contributors). This image is the very definition of "meh" and, as I've already commented before, FP urgents has a natural bias to shift deservedly failing "meh" images to scraping a pass. The requirement to have "consensus" for promotion rather than a 2/3 majority, say, further makes it likely that a scraping pass will occur on an image with significant opposes -- because people naturally don't like to oppose and would rather avoid conflict and say nothing. As I'm involved I won't undo the edit to the urgents template but think someone else should. -- Colin°Talk 21:23, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no. Nominators are the only ones likely to put it into there, unless (as I was doing for a while) someone is systematically putting things into urgents by date (and when I did that, I did include mine in the systematic list, because you must admit, it would be very foolish for me to do it for everyone else's, then expect someone to notice I had done everyone's but mine, and mine were unlisted.).
Perhaps we should make more of an effort to systematically populate FPC urgents again, but criticising someone for making use of it? No. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:49, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well if nobody other than the nominators are making any effort with it, and it merely serves as a "please support me as I'm almost out of time" last gasp plea, then it is time to retire this dubious means of advertising mediocre candidates. Colin°Talk 23:16, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly the edit summary I included said it all - this is the very definition of something that should go in FPC Urgents. Just because it was a nomination you vehemently opposed is no reason to come here complaining, and FWIW the end result totally disproves your diatribe above given that the only two extra votes after it was listed were opposes. You had already had plenty of comment on this candidate before this attack, and I'm starting to feel that your constant denigration of my contributions as seen here is going beyond opposition to just the image/s. The heading of this section "Abuse of FP urgents" says just that. As best I can remember this is only the second image I've ever added to FPC Urgents - and yet you come on here and accuse me of abusing it? Next thing you'll be accusing me of abusing FPC by making occasional nominations. Your tactics are really getting out of hand. --jjron (talk) 14:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've no idea what you are talking about wrt "constant denigration of my contributions" as I'm truly struggling to recall what images of yours I've commented on before. I'm guess I have commented before because that's true of most people's contributions here. WP:AGF. Yes, the edit summary said it all: "1/2 a vote off 5". FP urgents was created for neglected nominations (something I still disagree with because typically nominations get neglected for a reason) not for nominations with 10 folk commenting but only 1/2 a point away from success. That's abuse. Tell me, if you'd got your 5 supports and there were 4.5 opposes, would you nominate it for urgents to see if perhaps any more opposes could be found? What you you think if I did that? The whole FP urgents concept is broken -- we should let "meh" nominations fail and nominators should have the good grace to accept that. Colin°Talk 15:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose based on license

Would it be valid to oppose promotion of images based on chosen license, (yep the GFDL-1.2 thing again). I still think this license is detrimental to the project, and we're promoting images that are supposed to be our best work on a free encyclopedia but these images are basically not free. I also think we should be more on-par with commons:Commons:Image_guidelines for featured picture quality. So I'm wondering, is this a valid reason to oppose promotion? — raekyt 15:30, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Slightly different point, but I *do* think we should still allow America-only copyright free stuff, for instance, British works from before 1923, but which aren't out of copyright in Britain due to Britain lacking a statutory cutoff year. Because otherwise, we fail to incentivise good-quality copies of such works, which en-wiki encourages otherwise. Since we have automatic ways to tag them for transfer to Conmmons on a specific date (see the parameters for {{PD-US-1923-abroad}}), that would be a bad thing. Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:50, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm getting a bit tired of this now. SO we are still looking for useless reasons to oppose perfectly good pictures despite this being rejected again and again? How about we spend that time taking pictures and upload them at the licenses of our choice for wiki's benefit instead? --Muhammad(talk) 19:10, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Both Wikipedia and Commons are founded on the principles of Free Cultural Works, which means anyone can reuse the content (whether charity, non-profit, commercial, government, personal, religious, atheist, communist, capitalist, Friend of America, Axis of Evil, cool or uncool). The GDFL licence (designed for software documentation, not pictures or encyclopaedias) was originally accepted because there was nothing better. There are now are better licences. It is widely accepted that the GDFL is an unsuitable licence for images and is being used as a nearest-alternative to an CC BY-NC licence, which is not "free" in the way WP/Commons understands the term. The GFDL for images potentially harms all re-users whether they are the scout-group leader wanting to include one of our images in a quiz or a medical charity wanting to use them in a patient leaflet. Those who persist in using it as a sole licence do not fully "get Wikipedia" IMO but I agree they are contributing valuable content. I don't think individuals opposing is an appropriate way of dealing with it as it would just be disruptive. The main reason I started the discussion on Commons FP criteria over this was to end the festering sore cause by the same individual actions and hot-head responses there. Nobody forces you to support such images if you don't regard them as Wikipedia's "best work". Raising this issue for discussion does not deserve the rude response above. Colin°Talk 20:06, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think it is a perfectly legitimate reason for opposing. If we sometimes oppose with no reason at all, or with childisg reasons, why can't we oppose based on the fact that an image cannot be used outside Wikimedia? Anyway the correct way of dealing with the subject is, of course, to eliminate GFDL-1.2. A first step in the right direction could be, as we did in Commons, to prevent pictures with such license to be nominated. Yes, it is all right to make money with our creations. But no, we can't have it all... -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 21:32, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • They're not allowed to be uploaded here anymore since 2009. Only stumbling block is we allow images from Commons, and common's allows them to exist. It's really on Commons now to eliminate the license like we did 4 years ago. I don't see why we should allow featured pictures of something we won't even allow to be uploaded locally? — raekyt 00:48, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here I agree with Raeky and Colin. Commons also doesn't encourage such a restrictive licensing. They have only three options at their Commons:Special:UploadWizard; CC-BY-SA (recommended), CC-BY, and CC0. Here, all of our pages have the footnote "Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details." Why not we can discourage something we really want to discourage (restrictive licensing)? But I don't agree with the "individual choice to oppose" (from my experiance in Commons). It only attracts revenge votes; making that page a war-place. I think it is better to make a decision as in Commons ("Licensing - Images licensed with solely "GFDL 1.2 only" and "GFDL 1.2 and an NC-only license" are not acceptable due the restrictions placed on re-use by these licenses."). JKadavoor Jee 07:27, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well then can we have the conversation to disallow these again? — raekyt 13:08, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • If someone with a bot can sort through the 3,312 featured pictures we already have to get some idea of the impact this would have? I suspect only a small number are under this license. — raekyt 13:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think this is the time to bring that conversation here too. But I too suggest to do all homework (like collect the number of existing FPs that may affected, etc.) prior to the start. It was a very hard discussion, lot of longtime-inactive-members came to oppose; but the decision of the closer was very critical: "consensus isnt defined as 2/3rds nor is it the majority opinion, for the record 19 opposing votes out of 51 votes is only 37% which is within the descretionary range for rfa. Weight of arguments presented based on policy is also part of deciding consensus. I considered policy there is no specific policy that preculeds projects determining their own requirements, so then I considered accepted practice(policy by default). The long term accepted practice is that projects like FP, QI can make restrictions greater than that of the overall community participation requirements, FP already restricts who can vote, QI already restricts source, they both set minimum size limits. I also considered what FP is, FP is the means to identify "our best work" the proposal put forth the argument that our best work should also inculde best practice when it comes to licensing. The support argument was that GFDL is being deliberately misused to restrict reuse(not freely available), compared to the oppose arguments of acceptable license but that never addressed the issue of misuse. What I'm expressing is a carefully considered outcome based on the agruments put forth and that is our best work(FP) can and should excluded works where the deliberate misuse of licensing makes an image not freely available. Gnangarra 02:00, 19 October 2012 (UTC)" JKadavoor Jee 15:59, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • We need to clarify something that I misunderstood when the Commons discussion was started. The "GFDL 1.2 Only" licence is a reaction to the historical licence migration process from GFDL 1.3 to a dual licence with CC BY-SA that occurred in the past and no longer applies. Any content uploaded with GFDL 1.3 since November 2008 can't be automatically migrated to CC BY-SA. So the issues with 1.2 currently apply to 1.3 and to any future GFDL licence unless GNU in their wisdom decide to remove some of its onerous terms. So a discussion that focussed on "GFDL 1.2 Only" would achieve very little -- folk would just switch to "GFDL 1.3" which has identical problems. The issue is with all GFDL licences. -- Colin°Talk 20:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • There was an interesting article in The Guardian recently: Even Google won't be around for ever, let alone Facebook. A librarian, discussing the Google Books project, asked the Google co-founders "I'm wondering what happens to all this stuff when Google no longer exists." We should be asking "I'm wondering what happens to all this stuff when Wikipedia no longer exists." In addition, when we no longer exist as Wikipedian. Part of the attraction of licences like CC is that the re-user is given permission to do something without having to ask. Typical copyright licensing requires negotiation. Muhammad has, in the past, suggested that on request he will permit folk to use his images without the GFDL requirements as long as they aren't greedy big corporations looking for a free ride. But if Wikipedia or User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim or User:Colin no longer exist (or are inactive) that is not possible. The greedy big corporations can get stock images for tuppence ha'penny these days anyway, and with all the benefits of indemnity protection that WP/Commons can't offer. Colin°Talk 20:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • One more point. The "number of existing FPs that may affected" that Jkadavoor mentioned: the answer is zero. Nobody proposed this would be retrospective on Commons and I don't think it should be retrospective here either. Wrt new FPs, only a handful of editors use this licence, compared with dozens of active editors and the whole multitude of Flickr and other free sources. Colin°Talk 22:34, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree, but I would propose a moratorium on such licenced images in the POTD que that hasn't appeared on the main page since this license has been determined to be not in the spirit of the open freedoms of the project. Existing FPs can stay, disallow promotion of GFDL-only licenced images, and halt any in que for POTD with license would be my proposal. — raekyt 22:42, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agree (with Colin); it was a response to Raeky's argument that the case in Wikipedia is different. Further, I think most of the contributor's (if still alive and able to respond) will change their mind and add another suitable license as an alternate choice. I fully agree with Colin that we should plan with a long-sight to future where Jkadavoor or any other user not able to respond to any queries or requests due to their death or inactivity. Raeky, I think you can go on with this proposal. JKadavoor Jee 05:41, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed change

  1. Disallow promotion of GFDL-only licensed images as Featured Pictures.
  2. Grandfather existing Featured Pictures with this license, i.e. not demote them on license alone.
  3. Prevent any such licensed images in the POTD que from appearing on main page after enactment of this change.

Reasoning: Wikipedia in 2009 depreciated use of these licenses, and disallowed local hosting of them, see Speedy deletion criteria F3. Commons's Featured Picture project has also disallowed promotion of such licensed images in October 2012. The license choice, is an attempt to circumvent the open access freedoms that Wikipedia was founded on, which is one of the five pillars that this project stands on. — raekyt 14:23, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment this proposed change affects exactly three users on Wikipedia: User:Hasin Shakur, User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim and User:Jjron. The first has contributed just two pictures and one featured picture. The other two have contributed many pictures and have many featured pictures between them. Out of the 356 pictures nominated in 2012 that achieved feature picture status, only 11 (3%) had the GFDL licence. Colin°Talk 20:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • Support per reasoning above. — raekyt 14:24, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support though I'm neutral on the POTD issue -- sounds like an administrative hassle and would be simpler just to accept any FP, old or new. What do those running POTD think wrt any hassles this might entail (separate from whether they personally agree with it)? Also the comments wrt deprecated licences and speedy delete issues applies to "GFDL 1.2-only" licences, not to GFDL in general. For the sake of avoiding confusion, it might be best to express the 1st clause as "Disallow promotion as Featured Pictures any images having GFDL as the sole licence or GFDL multi-licensed only with an -NC licence." The main issues against the GFDL for images are set out and discussed at the Commons discussion linked above. -- Colin°Talk 15:40, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per the discussion on Commons. JKadavoor Jee 15:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support if Colin's suggested changes are made. The reason is that an image that has {{gfdl}} on it and nothing else could be considered GFDL-only (through plausible misreading of Raeky's wording) in the sense that that's the only template on it. We are discussing those images that explicitly prevent relicensing, right? As for POTD, changes to the FPC and POTD processes should be kept separate. Chick Bowen 18:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Could you clarify what you mean by "relicensing"? Colin°Talk 21:28, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I mean GFDL 1.3 images that are eligible to be relicensed as CC are still permitted. I don't know if there are any left, but the deal that the WMF made with the FSF to allow relicensing did not, as I understood it, expire. Chick Bowen 22:34, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Can you give an example, do these still exist? — raekyt 01:06, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • I don't know of an example--it would be hard to find one without writing a script. There might not be any. There aren't supposed to be. I don't regard this as a big deal--it's just that I understood you to be suggesting that the FP project should be as restrictive of licensing as WP itself, and I wouldn't want us to accidentally make it more restrictive (beyond, of course, the requirement of free images). This is why I preferred Colin's more precise wording. I would prefer, though, to keep POTD separate, hence the conditional support. Sorry if I wasn't clear in the first place. Chick Bowen 03:43, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
            • I think this re-licensing aspect is a distraction -- GFDL 1.3 images can no longer be auto-migrated to CC as there was a date deadline for that. If there were some GFDL 1.3 licences uploaded before the deadline that didn't get auto-migrated, I would be very surprised as I would have thought a bot did the migration. And anyway, even if there were some migration still to occur, we'd just let it occur and then nominate it once it has a CC licence too. So let's ignore this aspect. It is why I think the "GFDL-only" aspect is confusing and I can't fully support that -- someone could dual licence with "GFDL 1.2-only" and "CC BY-SA" (or "Art Libre") and that would be perfectly fine. -- Colin°Talk 08:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support points 1 and 2 (per discussion), Oppose point 3 (meaningless) -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 18:10, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per above. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 1&2, Oppose 3 Per the above with the caveat that even though we hope that at least one person will look at the license during voting and/or before the image is promoted, if an image slips through the cracks it probably isn't worth delisting just for that reason so it should be treated as if it were an already existing FP. That may seem like an edge case but it avoids all sorts of arguments and headaches that could pop up. Cat-fivetc ---- 04:14, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question So this proposal would still allow GFDL+CC-BY-NC licensed images? --ELEKHHT 04:22, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • No; I think. "If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing please do not comment here. It is a waste of your time. One of Wikimedia Commons' basic principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is just a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias." I think this is quite applicable here to. Adding CC-BY-NC as a license is merely to confuse potential end users. JKadavoor Jee 05:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. The spirit of the rules is to prohibit images which are not truly "free." For example, at Commons, a prohibition on (post-2009) GFDL-1.3 was added later, because the spirit of the vote on GFDL-1.2 was clearly to include that as well. We don't argue over technicalities, and loopholes shall not exist. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • But both of them have at least one valid license (CC-BY-SA or FAL). I can't understand the logic behind adding CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-SA together. :) JKadavoor Jee 07:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Adding a -NC licence is fine. As long as there is one truly free licence for images (such as CC BY-SA or Art Libre (aka FAL)). Having more licence options isn't necessarily confusing or bad. If someone makes a derivative work, they could choose to take the -NC licence for their new work. Without the CC BY-NC-SA, they would be forced to take CC BY-SA for their new work per the "share alike" aspect. Of course, if you don't want the re-user to create an -NC derivative work, then don't add an -NC option and use a share-alike licence. If one uses CC0 licence (effectively public domain) then there is no share-alike restriction and creators of derivative works can do what they like, including full copyright. Colin°Talk 08:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose. Lets stop undermining people that are actually actively contributing new content to the project, eh? And furthermore this is not, and should not be, a clone of the inferior Commons FPC. Referring to some discussion there is meaningless and is rightly ignored. If that's where you want to contribute and the rules you wish to follow, then no one's stopping you from doing so, but it doesn't give you the right to come here and ram your rules down everyone else's throat. And people wonder why we're down to a handful of photographers making quality original contributions. --jjron (talk) 14:49, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • This has nothing to do with picking on specific contributors, it's about following the principles that this project was founded on. An article contributor doesn't have the option of contributing their text under a more restrictive license, in hope of being able to make money off of it. People are free to contribute or not, part of making a contribution is accepting that their work needs to be freely licensed for all uses, including commercial. The GFDL license, which is not acceptable to use locally, only on Commons, puts a serious restriction on free use. There are loads of great photographers that would contribute if we allowed non-commercial licenses, hell we could turn Wikipedia into Getty Images 2.0, and let people buy access to everything here, sell access at $10 a pop per article you want to read! We'd get more contributors, sure but that's not what this is about. The photographers your referring too if you look at their image pages, they all link to their personal websites/store fronts where they SELL rights to their images, they're effectively using this process and Wikipedia as free advertising. Again NOT what this project was founded on. If they wan't to contribute they need to use a license that is compatible what we allow on Wikipedia. The fact that Common's allows something, fine, doesn't mean it's acceptable here for uploaded content. So why should we promote something we wouldn't even allow to be hosted locally? — raekyt 15:49, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well; all I can see is an angry response from a contributor whose interest may have affected: "My images are published on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects under the GFDL license. If you want less restrictive terms for reproduction of my images off the Wikimedia projects please contact me for details. As well as the alternative licensing I will often be able to provide images at higher resolution or quality settings if required, or may have related images that I have not made available to Wikipedia." JKadavoor Jee 16:34, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose as a photographer and one of FPC's most active contributors, such useless rules will make me rethink my contributions. As long as the license is valid on commons as free, we should have no objection with it as the license does not explicitly prohibit commercial use. For those who say large companies would buy stock images rather than use wiki ones, I have had my images used in violation of the terms by many such as Forbes and National Geographic. If I get paid for such uses, I can buy better equipment and create better images for wikipedia. Most of the little I make goes towards lenses and park/travel expenses. --Muhammad(talk) 18:21, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Let's work this out. You use "GFDL 1.2-only" so that big corp can't use your images. Yet you say big corp has used your images regardless. All this shows is that like many hindrances to use/reuse folk come up with (DRM, region-coding DVD, etc) they don't prevent misuse and just get in the way of the honest guy. But your example doesn't prove the point, which is that large companies can buy micro-stock images for prices that make the risks and hassles of using a WP/Commons photo unattractive to anyone with any sense. A discussion on what WP regards as appropriate licensing for its best images really isn't concerned with how you fund your hobby. If WP wants to pay you to take photos, you know already there are grants -- and if those aren't forthcoming then well you have your answer as to whether Wikipedia wants to pay you for its photographs. Colin°Talk 18:53, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Because I use GFDL, I could write to these companies and ask them to pay up for their violations (which they did). Most honest people ask permission and I usually waiver the strict licensing at my discretion. Were I to die (as you pointed out earlier), my will, will hopefully donate these images under a CC license so that permission is no longer required. --Muhammad(talk) 19:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well let's hope nobody dies any time soon -- far more likely is that folk just move on from Wikipedia, as they do for various reasons, leaving no way of contacting them. Companies that pay up would do so likewise for CC BY-SA violations too. As for paying for your hobby -- your current kit is perfectly capable of taking featured pictures and if it is worn out then that isn't due to photographs uploaded to Wikipedia/Commons as the camera has a life of ten-of-thousands of photos. The truth is that photography is an expensive hobby, with new gear we all lust after, and most of us fund it like any hobby from our own funds. What we give to WP is a donation. We don't take grants from Wikimedia and then upload photographs with restrictive licences so we can make more money from them as well. Colin°Talk 08:53, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I don't think this helps Wikipedia. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:07, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose I don't think this helps anybody. Benjamint 20:27, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The above two comments ("I don't think this helps Wikipedia/anybody") aren't arguments; just statements of belief. You might as well have written "I like the colour green" for all that it has added to the discussion and for all that it will count in the end. Wikipedia is fundamentally free content, which absolutely means we must respect the rights of anyone to use, reuse and derive from our work without legal or practical hindrance. Note The Definition of Free Cultural Works requires a licence to be practical, which the GFDL is not for images or short texts. Many may wish Wikipedia was something else, like a non-commercial online encyclopaedia full stop. But it isn't. It is free content. Therefore, how can "our best" images be licensed at odds with the core values of Wikipedia? I'd like to hear your arguments, not your wishes or vague beliefs. Colin°Talk 21:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment -- I endorse Colin's evaluation about the the two above oppose votes and add two more. Let me quote what I think are emotional and unhelpful reactions which have nothing to do with the matter under discussion: (1) Lets stop undermining people that are actually actively contributing new content to the project, eh? And furthermore this is not, and should not be, a clone of the inferior Commons FPC (from jjron) [not very elegant or objective, is it?]; (2) as a photographer and one of FPC's most active contributors, such useless rules will make me rethink my contributions (from Muhammad) [this sounds like a threat to me]. Of course, this problem will eventually be solved when Commons decide to deprecate those type of licenses or Wikipedia decide not to accept them from Commons. But it may some time I'm afraid... -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 22:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Allow me to explain then. The goal of an en-wiki Featured Content process is to encourage high-quality material to use on en-wiki (hence why we have an encyclopedic value test, and a use in article test). The goal of Commons FPC is to get high-quality material for a free-use content repository. For Commons' goal,. GDFL 1.2 isn't appropriate. For en-wiki's goal, it's perfectly fine. Therefore, I see no reason whatsoever to restrict away GDFL 1.2, and, as it would drive off good contributors, it would actively hurt the goals of en-wiki FPC. I reiterate my oppose, and upgrade to strong oppose. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:28, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Then how do you explain the fact that we speedy delete images uploaded with that license here? It's hard to argue that the content license fits with en-wiki's goals when we delete it. — raekyt 22:42, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • The goal of en-wiki is to be "a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project". You seem to be wilfully ignoring the free-content bit, and all that entails. This isn't just a website with some interesting articles and nice pictures to look at. As you say, Commons is solely an image (and some other non-text media) repository. But Wikipedia is free encyclopaedic content, which includes articles and images. And that content is widely reused. As for "driving off good contributors", we don't decide what is our best work based on the threats of a handful of photographers, who in the grand scheme of images used on Wikipedia, account for far less value than they think. Our "free content" license requirements already put off potential good contributors and we live with that no problem. Colin°Talk 23:14, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per above reasoning. -- Lycaon (talk) 07:04, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I've no wonder while seeing all these ‘’strong opposes’’ without any valid arguments; it had happened several times, here, and in many similar places. We've a guideline Wikipedia:NPOV: “Arguments mustn't take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it.”; but who care.
    Trying to answer the “arguments” above:
    Commons and Wikipedia are entirely different entities. We are only interested in Wikipedia. (per jjron)
    Commons and Wikipedia are not entirely different entities; they are part of the common entity, Wikimedia. All the policies and guidelines are inherited from the same parent.
    As long as the license is valid on commons as free, we should have no objection with it as the license does not explicitly prohibit commercial use. (per Muhammad)
    Commons is maintaining some old licenses for backward compatibility and a wide variety of licenses for different purposes of media. But for “own contributions” nowhere in the Upload Wizard it displays a GFDL. Further, at Commons:Copyright_tagsdeed.en#GNU_Licenses it says: “Please note: The GFDL is rather impractical for images and short texts, because it requires the full text of the GFDL to be published along with the image. This is prohibitive for print media: in order to use a single image in a newspaper, a full page containing the GFDL would have to be printed. To resolve this, please dual-license your work under GFDL and an equivalent Creative Commons license like CC-by-sa-3.0 (see below). This helps to make your work usable not only freely, but also easily.”
    That is advice for new images for commons. Our job is to decide whether or not an image illustrates an article well enough to be considered the best. --Muhammad(talk) 08:52, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    But still I can see you upload files with a GFDL license only. Do we appreciate contributors who disrespect the guidelines? JKadavoor Jee 10:20, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The goal of an en-wiki Featured Content process is to encourage high-quality material to use on en-wiki. (per Adam Cuerden)
    What is high quality media? See Wikipedia:Featured_picture_criteria #4: “Has a free license. It is available in the public domain or under a free license. Fair use images are not allowed. To check which category a particular image tag falls under, see the list at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags”. It is not clearly mentioned there (assuming good faith on the contributor); but at Upload Wizard, under option “This file is my own work.”. JKadavoor Jee 07:38, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The purpose of FPs is to recognize the best of wikipedia's work, not wikimedia's. While it may be ok for wikimedia to disallow FPs based on this license, wikipedia should not concern itself with licenses. As long as the image is considered free (able to be uploaded on commons), it should be considered ok for wikipedia. Our job is to decide whether an image illustrating an article does so well enough to be considered unique. The license it has does not hinder its encyclopedic value. --Muhammad(talk) 08:52, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Don't mix the words "Wikimedia" and "Wikimedia Commons". Wherever I say "Wikimedia", I mean Wikimedia; not Commons. Remember "Wikipedia" is just a "Wikimedia Project" like "Commons". JKadavoor Jee 09:54, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • "wikipedia should not concern itself with licenses". Buzz. Wrong answer. This is a free content project. Colin°Talk 08:55, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • While I do sympathise with Muhammad regarding his desire to control use of his images, and I actually dislike the fact that Wikipedia is a 'free content' project when it places higher importance on licensing and use outside of Wikipedia than it does on encylopaedic value within the scope of Wikipedia, fundamentally I agree with your arguments Colin. As it stands, the proposal here is in keeping with the goals of Wikipedia, such as they are. And this proposal doesn't stop contributions of GFDL licensed content to Wikipedia and Commons, it simply stops the content being featured. Therefore the opposition to the proposal seems to be motivated primarily by vanity. Of course Muhammad and others are contributing to Wikipedia for other reasons too, but I think it's important to keep the reasons for contributing content to Wikipedia, and the reasons for submitting content to FPC as separate arguments. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 09:09, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • A very good point of view, for me. Chances that I too think it is worthless to contribute freely to Wikimedia. But then I prefer to simply walk out than do stick here and try to corrupt the system for my interests. JKadavoor Jee 10:09, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • A very Strong oppose. What for a stupid discussion, what for a stupid reason!?! GFDL 1.2 is still allowed, a not perfect license for all, but an ALLOWED license!!! For Wikipedia is a CC-BY-NC license valid enough. Do we need more??? What about the commercial interests of our photographers? Is the interest of stranger commercial users more important then the interest of our photographer? Our Photographer donate the images to the Wikipedia, not the parasite commercial users! Think about my words ... and sorry for my bad English . We can be happy to have a GFDL 1.2 only image then nothing. It is simply my unshakable conviction. --Alchemist-hp (talk) 09:32, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • But it doesn't stop you from contributing to Wikipedia, it just stops the images from being featured. And as I said above, even though I don't agree with all of the goals of Wikipedia, this is what they've decided and it isn't going to change even if we argue about it here. It's like going to court and saying "I don't agree with this law! It's stupid and it's my belief that the law should be changed!". Well, you might even be right, but nobody in the courtroom has any control over it, they simply apply the law as well as they can. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 09:59, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. As happened last year with the image size proposal, it's clear that those trying to shove this through will simply attempt to flood everyone opposing it with the same responses repeated ad nauseum, or by specifically and personally targeting those people as individuals. Proof? Simply look at the extensive replies, often personal, directed at all the oppose !voters, while those in opposition allow supporters to place their !vote in peace. This is obviously in order to try to shout down the opposers' points of view, and more importantly to intimate anyone else considering opposing who may be a bit more reticent to jump into the fray to entirely refrain from commenting. Very sad. Very, very sad. --jjron (talk) 13:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's an interesting phrase: "everyone opposing it" wrt the image size discussion. Two people opposed who hadn't shown any interest in FP before, left their single comment and didn't respond further (one didn't hadn't made more than a handful of edits to WP for years before and hasn't made any edits since). The other was Samsara and folk can examine their contribution to the discussion and make their own mind up. As for this discussion, all I see is those who stand to lose out on future gold stars getting hot headed and rather exaggerating their own self importance to the project. Colin°Talk 14:16, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose. GFDL is a free License. Point. Its no perfect but ist a free License. Ralf Roletschek (talk) 16:00, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Basically per Adam; I fail to see how this benefits the project. In fact, this would have a negative effect, discouraging people from contributing high quality images. SpencerT♦C 17:30, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • In fact, if otherwise (if allow GFDL); it will encourage more people to go that way. Finally, we've only GFDL contributions. We get more "quality" contributions, if we allow "All rights reserved outside Wikipedia". JKadavoor Jee 06:55, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Exactly, if we allowed NC clause licenses for pictures we would, a guarantee you, get HUGE amounts of HIGH quality pictures. But the project has determined we can't and won't do that. GFDL-1.2 ONLY clauses like above is a backdoor approach to a NC clause... That's why it shouldn't be even allowed to exist even on Commons, that's why Commons FP process disallows it, that's why we speedy delete images with that here locally... It's not within the spirit of this project. If people want to make money from their images there's plenty of websites for that, wikipedia is not one. What you contribute here should be FREELY licensed, and that means sacrificing commercial profit from your contributions, otherwise it's not really a contribution but more like an advertisement for a product your selling. — raekyt 07:02, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • What insulting nonsense. Anyone that I've known of using this license is 100% happy with the usage of their freely given image in any Wikimedia project worldwide, in an original or modified form, and is perfectly happy to sacrifice commercial profits from these contributions for the benefit of the project. What they usually object to is some multimillion dollar business making commercial profits off their contributions without paying a cent for it. Then they come here and are accused that their contributions are an "advertisement for a product your selling" (sic). It beggars belief that you are so desperate to feather the nests of these organisations, and yet would probably be the first to jump up and down to defend their copyright claims. --jjron (talk) 05:16, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Simply because I think pragmatic is better for Wikipedia than idealistic in this case. Home grown high quality contribution is important to solicit other image donations. I've done a lot of said soliciting behind the scenes myself. The GFDL is a free license, and the images can be used commercially. The barrier isn't even high for online use. It's just a mild pain in the ass for print use. FYI, at a minimum 7.5% of all featured pictures are GFDL-1.2. JJ Harrison (talk) 09:43, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you for your thoughtful response, which makes a change from the heat/no-light elsewhere. I've a wikifriend who solicits some huge donations from organisations and they are asked to donate CC. I feel the acceptance by the community of a back-door -NC licence is hypocritical. Indeed, the only folk using GFDL for images are a few dinosaur wikipedians/Commons. As for whether GFDL "is" or "is not" free, well that comes down to one's interpretation of whether it is "practically free", as required by the Definition of Free Cultural Works. Whether you think it is "just a mild pain in the ass" isn't important -- it is what potential reusers think or believe, and what those using it want to achieve. The latter group want to restrict reuse, which is fundamentally against the aims of this site and not something to celebrate with our featured process. The former group, on reading the GFDL will left wondering how on earth this can apply to them and what to make of it -- thus unable to use it. Colin°Talk 10:54, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • "at a minimum 7.5% of all featured pictures are GFDL-1.2" - May be; because GFDL was the only license that is considered as the most suitable license in our old days. In June 2009, Wikipedia has made the change from the GFDL license to CC-BY-SA as its preferred choice. We have similar discussions in our old days too. And so many other wikis followed our track. It is a pity that our most reputed members still refuse to accept this change. JKadavoor Jee 12:06, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • The percentage of featured pictures being GFDL is historical, you have to go back several years to find any numbers being submitted at all. In 2012 the percentage dropped to 3% and was due to only three users on Wikipedia: User:Hasin Shakur, User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim and User:Jjron. The first has contributed just two pictures and one featured picture. The other two have contributed many pictures and have many featured pictures between them. These three contributed 11 pictures out of 356 FPs in 2012. There has been a little peak in January this year, with 8 FPs by Muhammad and 1 by Jjron. So this proposal affects just two regulars at FP, both of whom use their file description pages to advertise. Colin°Talk 20:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • So Colin continues his trumped up claims and personal attacks. Of course most people won't bother checking his claims, so I'll quote what my image pages actually say: "This image has been released for use worldwide under the licensing specified below. If you require different licensing (e.g., for commercial publishing), or a larger or higher quality version of this image, it may be available from the author. You can contact the author by clicking here and leaving a message, or by sending me an email." (two links go to my talkpage and to the Wiki email page). So this is advertising is it? Unlike many other contributors I don't even link to an external website, Facebook feed, etc in order to try generate off-Wiki business (all perfectly acceptable BTW if you care to read up on it). In most cases people who do contact me seeking alternative terms get an essentially copyright free version in whatever form they require. --jjron (talk) 04:53, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • You've said before that you use GFDL to restrict those who can re-use your content, denying it to certain groups and charging others. This isn't free content and should not be celebrated by a featured picture star. You are welcome to your point of view regarding control over your pictures. I have absolutely no problem with the point of view. It just doesn't align with the fundamentals here on Wikipedia and we shouldn't be happy about that here. Colin°Talk 08:56, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Several people have suggested that this proposal doesn't help Wikipedia. Perhaps they think WP will have fewer great images or that the Featured Picture forum will lose lots of contributors. The fact is that only two regulars at FP contribute all the GFDL images going back over a year. When Commons eliminated GFDL images from FP, there was a 40% increase in nominations compared to the same period last year -- I'm not suggesting these were related at all but it shows that Commons FP has never been healthier and suffered no loss. Colin°Talk 20:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support (to balance those Super strongest possible oppose nonsense out ;-) ). Of course this helps the project. We should not put material licensed to make free reuse deliberately hard on a pedestal. This is clear as glass to me and I cannot understand how somebody can be either so in denial or still try to rationalize this in spirit non-free nature of GFDL applied to images. This has to stop now before the minds of other potential contributors get poisoned with this license. --Dschwen 22:09, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Looks like the Commons debate all over again, with some of the same people opposing with weak arguments, if any (I do note there are a few argumented opposes too :-). Raeky, Colin, Jee and Daniel all make very good points with which I wholeheartedly agree.
    I must say I do not really understand the outcry − we are not talking about forbidding GFDL-only uploads (though that would be a good thing too, but let’s leave that aside), just about not featuring it. Some folks here seem to be telling us “you can’t have the best of both worlds − pictures that are both good and free” (on which I disagree). Well, these people cannot have the best of both worlds either − pictures both with a crappy backdoor to disallow commercial usage (while they still can) and featured on the main page. Media that make reusers jump through hoops are against the spirit of our projects, and are thus not the best we have, period. Jean-Fred (talk) 23:10, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, agree with Jjron (talk · contribs) and Adam Cuerden (talk · contribs), above. — Cirt (talk) 05:10, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I dislike the idea of treating an image differently in different places. If you convince the community to disallow the GFDL 1.2 project-wide, that will change FP along with everything else. If you can't convince the community to disallow the GFDL 1.2 project-wide, you have no standing to restrict when or where it can be used. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:23, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • That happened, you can't use GFDL 1.2 ONLY on en-wiki, and any GFDL license isn't available to choose during the upload process at en-wiki. Ergo, we restrict it HERE. Commons's is a separate project. — raekyt 03:04, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • The WTFPL isn't included in upload process but it is just as valid and even freer as the CC BY-SA. --Guerillero | My Talk 04:03, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • But we don't speedy delete images under that license, we do with GFDL 1.2 ONLY, which is the license I'm most concerned about. — raekyt 08:33, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • We don't CSD those images; we move them to commons. See {{GFDL-1.2}} --Guerillero | My Talk 17:55, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • From the begining of this discussion you've been mentioning that we speedy delete GFDL images. {{GFDL-1.2}} clearly mentions that speedy delete can only be done if the image is uploaded to commons. Further on the same template mentions, "The deprecation of this template does not prevent the use of GFDL 1.2-only files on the English Wikipedia, nor should this consensus be used as a precedent in discussions on other projects.". Which makes me ask myself why the speedy delete situation was even brought up. --Muhammad(talk) 19:57, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose a libre license is a libre license. Are we going to restrict FPs to only Creative Commons licensed works next? Not liking the terms of the license is not a valid argument. --Guerillero | My Talk 01:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • What a wilfully simplistic interpretation of a licence. Have you read the "On the GFDL wording" section below? A free licence must be practically free and appropriate to the media it covers. GFDL for images fails on both accounts. Colin°Talk 08:34, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • There is a misunderstanding here: The point of this proposal is not to put forward CC licenses over other free licenses ; it is to restrict FPs to “free in practice” licences (the only known offender being using only the GFDL 1.2, or GFDL 1.2 + unfree licenses). Folks who dislike Creative Commons (whatever the reason) are welcome to use other free licenses, like the FAL for example (there are indeed some folks on Commons who uses it for this very reason). (and noting the slippery slope in your argumentation). Jean-Fred (talk) 10:21, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment What is Wikimedia’s current policy on licensing? Is it http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Dual_license_vote_May_2009 ? Why? Is it because of http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Dual_license_vote_May_2009QA ? I doubt whether Wikimedia has a hidden agenda to encourage their contributors to make restrictive licensing as much as possible while pretending that they follow http://freedomdefined.org/Definition in front of public. It is only my doubt while seeing those opposes from the well known admins who are supposed to be very well versed in Wikimedia policies. JKadavoor Jee 06:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • The WMF is silent on this sort of thing for the most part. --Guerillero | My Talk 17:34, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Probably; so I did some searches which lead me to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Questions_and_Answers#Images : "If the migration occurs, will it change what image licenses are allowed to be used on WMF projects? Not immediately. It is possible that, at some future point, GFDL 1.2 media may be disallowed. However, this will only happen if CC-BY-SA is modified to make it more explicitly a "strong copyleft" license for embedded media, requiring the surrounding content to be licensed under CC-BY-SA. Currently both licenses are somewhat ambiguous in this regard." This means we are in a testing time where WMF is acquiring confidence in CC-BY-SA. I assume WMF already achieved it from its decision to replace CC-BY-SA+GFDL with CC-BY-SA as the preferred choice of license. So we can either decide to discourage further GFDL craps or tolerate them for the time being till WMF kick them out. JKadavoor Jee 06:36, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • There is no significant demand for an image licence that is "strong copyleft" -- that infects the containing media. Some people might wish to impose their free ideals on others but the reality is that it is impossible. GNU software is strong copyleft at the level of linking source code (or libraries) into an executable -- which is the equivalent of creating a derivative work. But it is not strong copyleft at the level of a collection of discrete components. Thus one can sell a computer or O/S or DVD that contains GNU software applications alongside commercial software applications that aren't free (in the GNU sense). Thus a book containing a CC BY-SA image doesn't need to be CC and such a licence, I predict, will never happen. I certainly wouldn't use it. Colin°Talk 08:23, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment There's a lot of wilful doublethink going on by people caiming nonsense like "a libre license is a libre license". This mantra-garbage is busted by our comrades who use the GFDL for their images. At least they are honest and straight-talking enough to admit they (all two of them) use it to restrict who can reuse their work. So enough of this crap about GFDL being a free content licence for images. It isn't used as such and it doesn't have that effect. Colin°Talk 10:05, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm sure that a 1984 Reference wins you the votes --Guerillero | My Talk 17:34, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • My own personal Godwin's Law (note the correct spelling) is that once people start commenting on argument technique rather than the issue at hand, they are wasting my time. For the benefit of non-timewasters, doublethink is quite an appropriate English word for how folk can simultaneously claim GFDL is a free licence and yet specifically choose it because it is not a free licence and allows them to restrict the reuse of their images. -- Colin°Talk 19:01, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Super strongest possible oppose To balance out the other nonsense :P I think this proposal is an incredibly presumptuous crusade by Colin which wholly lacks any kind of legitimacy. The FPC talkpage is simply not the forum - you cannot have FPC policies which are inconsistent with the policies of the English Wikipedia project. Leaving aside any discussion of the merits of the GFDL, this is a decision and discussion which belongs elsewhere at a far more generalised level. If I really strain, I can almost see the validity of commons FPC having banned the GFDL licence, since they are after all catering to all sorts of projects, but for FPC it's just wrong. EN:FPC is purely dedicated to the English Wikipedia - a project which fully supports GFDL (as well as fair use - which, incidentally, in principle should be eligible for FPC but in practice will never have sufficient resolution to pass) - and so should be governed by the licensing polices of this, specific, project. I think this fundamental flaw in the proposal is illustrated by the more recent themes in Colin's arguments which focus on slagging Muhammad and Jjron as the "only" two users of GFDL - not only is this very rude and myopic, it is a completely inappropriate perspective. This policy is not dictating what those two users can or cannot nominate, it is dictating to all English Wikipedia users - it is of consequence to numerous current users as well as incalculable future users and therefore it must be considered at a global level. --Fir0002 03:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You cannot have FPC policies which are inconsistent with the policies of the WMF: "All contributions are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (except Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5), meaning that their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license.". JKadavoor Jee 06:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I already mentioned it below ("The main problem is that Wikipedia not updated the “texts” in several pages according to the resent changes in their policies."). Please read the entire discussion instead of making a quick comment and run. JKadavoor Jee 10:47, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Once again the mistake is made that FPC criteria must somehow be enshrined at the level of deletion policy -- we don't delete out-of-focus images and we don't delete images for having excess noise. That argument is busted and was busted at the Commons debate - which rather surprised I think those who kept repeating it. Nobody at the image-size discussion said "If 200x300px is good enough for upload to Wikipedia, and makes a fine thumbnail illustration in an article, then it is good enough for FP". We are not debating "FPC policy" -- calling it policy is simply misleading. It is a set of criteria about what makes an excellent image on a free content encyclopaedia -- if it isn't really free content then how can it be excellent? I don't know why you think an PF criteria discussion affects "all English Wikipedia users". Most of Wikipedia is illustrated with images that fall far below the bar at FP and they illustrate just fine. What nonsense. Anyway, I should point out I didn't start this proposal and didn't want it to start here as I knew it would cause more heat than light. Those who use the GFDL licence do so to restrict reuse, and that is why ultimately it will be banned for upload to this free content project. It would be nice if FPC was ahead of the game. As for "the project fully supports GFDL" -- well no, it regards GFDL unsuitable for the project and only really kept for legacy reasons. .. Colin°Talk 08:42, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "That argument was busted on Commons" is not itself an argument. Please explain your rationale. If your rationale is analogising it to resolution then it is deeply misguided. The licence of an image, unlike its resolution or other technical characteristics, is not intrinsically part of the image. The question of the acceptability of the licence is determined by the philosophy, policies and practices of the project it is being used in and is very different from the attributes you describe. The appropriate analogy here would be FPC autonomously deciding that it would ban/censor pornographic and other offensive material. And you know this very well as your last few sentences make clear. Please pursue your agenda of banning GFDL content in the appropriate arena, not here. FPC is not here to "get ahead of the game" and be used as leverage for a project wide ban of GFDL - it is here to identify the best images from the project. --Fir0002 09:27, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Criterion 4 of WP:WIAFP is "Has a free license." So the licence is part of the criteria and not ignored wrt FP. Criterion 3 of WP:WIAFP is "Is among Wikipedia's best work." This is something for the FP community to define for itself and nothing to do with WP policy. The definition of Wikipedia is "a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation..." The free content aspect is the sticking point for many who argue that Wikipedia should be (or think it is) a "free to read Encyclopaedia" or that the content be "for educational use only". There's some merit in that argument. But ultimately, Wikipedia has decided its content is free as in The Definition of Free Cultural Works. This requires all content "can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose". The "by anyone" rules out Jjron's argument that he doesn't want certain people using his images and the "for any purpose" rules out the non-commercial/educational restrictions others want. There are only a few permissible restrictions allowed, such as attribution and copyleft. These are the terms we agree to when we submit work here. The GFDL was a pragmatic choice at the time WP was created as there was no alternative licence. But WMF were deeply unhappy with (read the links above) and CC was largely created to better serve WP/Commons and other similar groups. It may be that the community decide GFDL is still a pragmatic choice (and so don't ban it) but that doesn't mean they think it is a good choice for images. The fact that all those using it do so in order to restrict reuse, is utterly counter to the fundamentals of the project. Therefore I believe the FP community should not regard images so licensed as examples of "our best work". We can do this (if we wish) and do not need to change policy to do so. So a better line of argument would be to persuade us why the GFDL is a great licence for images and why images with that licence are among our best work. I don't believe it can be done, hence the deflection. As for the porno argument, well if the FP community wanted only "safe for work/children" images that would imo for it to decide -- but I doubt the argument would get much support because WP:NOTCENSORED is regarded as a fundamental. There's nothing stopping someone creating a "Featured buildings" or "Featured butterflies" or any other arbitrary criteria they wish, provided they get enough support for it to work. The idea that our criteria has to be as wide as our deletion policy is just false. Colin°Talk 09:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am a bit confused. At one instance we are told this proposal is a broad policy change and now you claim it is just a modification of the FPC criteria. If it is a policy change, this is not the right place to have it. If it is a discussion on the criteria, I think the majority of the participants have shown their disdain for the change. --Muhammad(talk) 11:27, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can't explain Raeky's use of the word "policy" in that comment and agree it is confusing -- this is just a criteria change. Both the WP:CENT advert and the proposal itself make it quite clear the proposal is only on the FP criteria. There's a slight majority opposed to the change currently. We'll see. Once again, the arguments on the oppose side are weak and just expose the discord between what the site is founded on and what a few individuals wish it were. Colin°Talk 11:53, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support Licencing isn't just about Wikipedia, it's about our re-users. Encouraging more userfriendly licences amongst our best images will help to spread free licenced content. Regards, Peter Weis (talk) 15:14, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Colin. Feature pictures -- indeed, all images -- should have an appropriate free license. GFDL is a free license, but not one intended for licensing images, and not appropriate for images. An inappropriate license is no better than a non-free license, and should not be acceptable. cmadler (talk) 02:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Examples

  • Some examples - not exclusive (with ** as a wildcard)
    • "GFDL 1.2 Only" Not acceptable as the only licence is GFDL which is impractical for images.
    • "GFDL 1.3" Same problem as above.
    • "GFDL" + "CC **-NC" Not acceptable as the additional licence isn't "free" - it prevents commercial re-use.
    • "GFDL" + "CC **-ND" Not acceptable as the additional licence isn't "free" - it prevents the creation of derivative works.
    • "GFDL" + "CC BY-SA" Acceptable, and this is the dual licence Wikipedia uses for text.
    • "GFDL" + "Free Art Licence" (aka Licence Art Libre) Acceptable. The FAL is very similar to "CC BY-SA".
    • "GFDL" + "Free Art Licence" + "CC BY-NC-ND" Acceptable as at least one licence option is free for images. Adding other non-free licences does is not a problem.
    • "CC BY-SA" Acceptable.
    • "Free Art Licence" Acceptable.
    • "CC0" Acceptable.
    • "Public Domain" Acceptable.
Colin°Talk 08:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The "unacceptable" ones would be obvious, since the NC/ND clauses are not allowed on a license alone, and if we rule out GFDL then if there isn't another acceptable license it wouldn't be allowed. Wording can be "Any GFDL licensed image that doesn't also have another valid license is prohibited from being promoted as a Featured Picture." or something similar... — raekyt 13:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Seems better. JKadavoor Jee 14:21, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Important before Closure

The commons discussion was closed without a 2/3 majority. For the FPC process here and all major decisions, a 2/3 majority is required before any major policy changes are made. --Muhammad(talk) 18:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FPC nominations use pure !vote counting, changes to criteria uses WP:CONSENSUS where arguments prevail over majority. — raekyt 20:13, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
At FPC we have always favoured a majority and I strongly emphasize that any changes made without the 2/3 majority will be considered null. It's stupid to have stricter rules and requirements for images to be featured, than to alter the rules themselves. --Muhammad(talk) 20:35, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The rules governing how pictures are featured are quite independent of the rules governing how Wikipedian's determine consensus. We do not vote on Wikipedia so those expecting some admin to tally up the supports and opposes will be greatly disappointed. Convince us with the strength of your argument. That's all that matters. Colin°Talk 21:33, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Debates rarely conclude on the basis of merit; typically they are ended by outside intervention, sheer exhaustion, or the evident numerical dominance of one group." From WP:Consensus. Saffron Blaze (talk) 22:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's why with things like this it's generally a good idea to request a close at WP:AN/RFC after a fair amount of time has passed for debate on it. Where the closing admin will weigh the merits of everyone's arguments and decide the consensus based on policy. Just a "I don't like it" !vote will have little merit to the consensus. — raekyt 22:09, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We've had many policy changes done here which required a majority. If a 2/3 majority does not support this I'd not consider the proposal passed. It is a waste of all our times if we discuss something like this for a long time only for one person (the closer) to do what they think is best. We had a similar process to closing FPC noms and quite a large number of the participants were not satisfied with this method of working. --Muhammad(talk) 03:33, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry you don't see the need for WP:CONSENSUS and outside uninvolved party closing disputes... — raekyt 03:47, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Decision-making involves an effort to incorporate all editors' legitimate concerns, while respecting Wikipedia's norms. It is good to respect the opinion of majority as far as their opinion respect Wikipedia's norms. Otherwise? I had read the opinion of one of our most active contributor in a discussion: “I prefer if Wikimedia allow CC-BY-NC-ND; it will attract more quality contributions.” Can we make such a policy change even if with a 100% support? It is a matter whether our current policy respects our norms. No; so we have to correct it according to our norms. That’s why this proposal. Here argument on what is our correct policy is important than mere majority. JKadavoor Jee 08:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • FP should not be a walled garden and should follow wikipedia's norms for a large policy discussion. That means that people outside of the "group" should be encouraged to contribute, the discussion should be closed by an outside sysop, and there needs to be a super-majority in support. --Guerillero | My Talk 02:03, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • The wording "super majority in support" has nothing to do with WP:CONSENSUS, and specifically when it comes to policy decisions. It's arguments that matter, you can have a 10% support rate for a policy decision, and if it's well reasoned, and the opposers are not based on policy, it can pass. This isn't a !vote process, but a policy decision. The number of people who oppose is irrelevant if they're not backed up by a good reason why. It's obvious that a GFDL 1.2-ONLY license that specifically states that you must print the full license text when you use it with it, and links to where you can BUY rights to use the image, is against policy. GFDL 1.3 and later, also have the same problems. — raekyt 08:38, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • That decision was made by 17462 Wikimedia volunteers with a 75.8% support. Please read the last lines at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Dual_license_vote_May_2009QA : "Does this license change affect both text and images, or only text? It will affect both text and images, except for images which are licensed under "GFDL 1.2 only". Those will not be dual-licensed." The only reason for keeping GFDL 1.2 is because our existing contributions with a GFDL 1.2 can’t be dual licensed. But it should not be a loop hole for uploading new contributions. JKadavoor Jee 09:10, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • "FP should not be a walled garden and should follow wikipedia's norms" Rubbish. That sort of thinking was blown out the water when we had the Commons discussion. Of course FP can have higher standards than the norm on Wikipedia. That's what distinguishes FP. We can set standards for sharpness, composition, size and freeness of licence. FP can set whatever standards we like. Colin°Talk 09:55, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note

I have added this discussion to WP:CENT. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:40, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Kindly remove it. IMO this is canvassing --Muhammad(talk) 12:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It has nothing to do with canvasing, it's a broad policy change. Read WP:CANVAS. — raekyt 12:41, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Muhammad, this is standard for an important decision. If he'd posted at Wikipedia:WikiProject CreativeCommonsRocks or Wikipedia:WikiProject DeathToGFDL then perhaps it would be canvassing. Colin°Talk 13:06, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, Muhammad's right. This is not "proposed changes to Wikipedia policy". If it was a dispute over whether images with a particular license should be uploaded then it may have a place there as it would be a policy change. This is not. --jjron (talk) 14:18, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • No canvassing at all. The annoucement was a broad one and everybody is free to partcipate in any discussion. In the present case, and although we are not discussing a change of policy, this discussion may trigger the debate on the apparent incompatibility between the ways of Commons and Wikipedia (which seems very necessary now). -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 14:58, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; I too think the opinions of article editors and other non-photographers are more important than our regulars. JKadavoor Jee 15:48, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is a very interesting point of view. Why would this be the case? Is it that you think the opinions of regulars here are unimportant? Is it that you think outsiders may be more likely to support your position? It's really a strange thing to say. It's not that outsiders may not be able to provide valuable input, but why is that more important than anyone else's? You see, despite the continual maligning of me throughout this debate – and unlike some others contributing to this discussion that seem to regard Wikipedia more as a social media platform than online encyclopaedia – I have extensive article contributions, many, many thousands entirely unrelated to my images. So in fact I am an article editor. So I'll tell you what I do with image use in articles. If I don't have something worthwhile to add of my own I may go and seek out something. If I find it on Wikipedia or Commons that is good. I check that it's not a 'non-free' image, and if not I insert it. I don't give a hoot whether the free license is GFDL or anything else - you see, anything but those non-free images can be freely used anywhere on the project. As an article editor that's all I care about. Why would I possibly care less whether it's GFDL or anything else? Someone has uploaded it to allow me to freely reuse it. Pure and simple. This is not an issue for article editors. And if you're wondering about the stunning lack of response from non-regulars despite advertising by King and Colin, well there's your answer. --jjron (talk) 13:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Glad to know you have extensive article contributions. It will be always nice if more article editors participate in the reviewing process. But unfortunately not many article editors showing any interests here (in WP:FPC). I don’t know the exact reasons; but I assume WP:FP is not an important resource for them (unlike COM:FP, QI and VI). While editing an article they look for images at COM:Categories and galleries; not here because the images here are already used ones. They look here only when to make a complaint. The lack of response here is also another symbol of their lack of interests here. The WP:FP gallery may be useful for other language editors (while translating the article here to their local wiki) and readers (who need good pictures for their research or any other purposes). I agree with you that the editors never look on the license; because they assume everything available here is free. People in Commons understand it; so they refrained from promoting GFDL works. What about thinking for separate FPCs for individual projects? :) JKadavoor Jee 17:30, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On importance

Just to put things into perspective. Check out Commons Category:Images from norden.org uploaded by Fæ. This recent mass upload is still ongoing but as of now has transferred 3,682 professional images to Commons under a CC BY licence from "Nordic Cooperation". Try this search for Nature on the original site. That's just one example of organisations releasing their work under truly free licences, not to mention Flickr and other image repositories. As a source of high quality images for illustrating Wikipedia articles, the efforts of the folk that hang about FPC don't appear on the radar. It is a great forum and does indeed attract folk to contribute high quality content. But let's not kid ourselves about how important any of us are. Colin°Talk 10:32, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion regarding importance, but the supporting argument is weak. At least 80% of those Nordic Corp photos are six to seven year old portraits of barely notable people. Very few of the nature gems have made their way over. I hope that is not deliberate. Saffron Blaze (talk) 13:07, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Still uploading as we talk. I've no doubt that Fæ intends to upload everything suitably licensed - which appears to be everything. It is easier to search the source site for content than to browse the huge category. -- Colin°Talk 14:16, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great, but until they're usefully used in Wikipedia articles they're of little or no use here. How many typical users of Wikipedia are going to trawl that huge category on a different site to find a suitable image? Approaching zero! That's the point about Wikipedia as a site used by millions daily, and enwiki:FPC. FPs here are recognised as high quality images that are being usefully employed in articles on Wikipedia easily available to all those millions of users. Please check the top of the page. This is Wikipedia, not Commons. --jjron (talk) 14:30, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've found a better way to browse the images: this page of images has a menu on the LHS. I've asked Fæ if these could be incorporated as sub-categories. Actually, I've a good mind to browse the images myself to see what would be included in articles. And I'm sure some other Wikipedia's for those countries would benefit even more. It is just one example. Of many. Colin°Talk 14:40, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

May I introduce Geoffrey R. Gallice to you; a graduate student at the University of Florida's Entomology and Nematology Department. He has 1,854 contributions to Wikimedia so far; all are transferred by our volunteers from his flickr account. This is his blog. We have several such contributors behind the curtain, who never argue for any appreciation or grant; but continue their free contributions that make Wikipedia how it looks now. (Further, as jjron argued, there is no need to use all pictures in articles to count any value for them. Most of our pages have a link to a relevant COM:Category or wiki species where a reader can find more relevant pictures. Sorry, if I’m linking various wiki projects; I can’t even think about they can stand independently.) JKadavoor Jee 15:43, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

His website: https://sites.google.com/site/neotropicalbutterflies/photography says for non-commercial purposes only. Saffron Blaze (talk) 15:56, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That seems only a request. I had contacted him several times for high resolution files here. He never refused; never changed his CC-BY license in Flickr. Anyway, thank you for the point. JKadavoor Jee 16:06, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It was just an example; we have so many non-Wikimedian authors. JKadavoor Jee 05:58, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The GFDL licence is only used by two regulars at FP: User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim and User:Jjron, who between them had 11 featured pictures in 2012. The collapse of Wikipedia will not occur if this licence is removed from the criteria. Colin°Talk 20:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

...but will occur if it's not (right?). --jjron (talk) 12:56, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sympathy

Since things are getting a bit heated above, I thought it worthwhile to say that I quite sympathize with John's and Muhammad's position. When I do research for a WP article, though the text itself is free-licensed, there is nothing to prevent me from using the information I have learned or the citations I have found in other writing that is copyrighted and published under my (real) name. (Obviously the edits of old photographs I do are largely uncopyrightable anyway.) Indeed, one of the main incentives for contributing to WP is to learn stuff, and that learning is transferable into my professional life. In photography there is no equivalent; I suppose one could take two slightly different shots of every subject, but every photographer knows there is always one that's clearly the best. Photographers are giving up their work entirely in a way that other contributors are not. Now, some do so without concern as cited above, but they presumably have other sources of income. No one should be judged for wanting to make money off of their work; a person needs to eat. All that said, Wikipedia is part of the free culture movement and should put genuinely free-licensed work forward as its best. That might indeed piss off some of our best photographers, and that is both our loss and theirs. But we needn't insult them on top of the injury we're doing. Sorry for the righteous lecture; I'm done now. Chick Bowen 16:37, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I've no problem if Wikimedia accept CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-ND as a choice of license in its sub projects. I’m happy to support if anybody raise this request in a proper forum and convince me with genuine arguments. But I don’t like people use GFDL as a shortcut to achieve this goal. It not only fails to stop all commercial uses; but stops many genuine non-commercial uses (both are against our current policy). Please be straight, truthful, and transparent in our policies and views. Making money is not very bad; but it should not be on the expense of our community, damaging the face and goodwill in front of the public. Nothing should prevent her to achieve the goal: “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.” (I’m no way against Muhammad, not neglecting his contributions to this community so far.) JKadavoor Jee 05:44, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem from my perspective is that this is the wrong venue to make policy changes. Just as people use GDFL to circumvent "free", people here are using FPC to forward their own agenda. Saffron Blaze (talk) 23:16, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The main problem is that Wikipedia not updated the “texts” in several pages according to the resent changes in their policies. (Our current policy according to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects is: "All major projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by its users using the MediaWiki software. All contributions are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (except Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5), meaning that their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license.") Main pages have the footnote “Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.” When you click on an edit button, it says “By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.” But GFDL alone is still there in several places like Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags#For_image_creators. So people make benefit from it. I think these people use the 'Old' upload form. It has an option under “Upload your own work”: “None selected (add a license tag under the summery box above, or this file will be deleted)”. There they add their predefined license template. The list of license contains only CC-BY-SA+GFDL, no GFDL alone. (I didn't get the "own agenda" part. :D Isn't it good to respond than keep silence while seeing an evil? Shouldn't we respect the rules of United States if we're the proud citizens of that country?) JKadavoor Jee 07:35, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Saffron's comment is mistaken. We're not making policy changes. Merely deciding what to celebrate with a bronze star. I see Muhammad and Jjron getting upset, naturally, because there's a threat to future awards that affects them personally (but nobody else). I see no arguments as to why images with GFDL should be celebrated. Just perhaps some fear that two good photographers might not contribute. That would indeed be sad, but merely a drop in the ocean as far as Wikipedia is concerned. We have lost far more content by disallowing -NC and yet the consequence of this is we have given far more to others to use. As for "their own agenda", well I'm afraid it is Wikipedia's agenda. The manifesto of which is authored by Erik Möller, Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. Some people aren't just getting the "free content" bit, though. It isn't "the encyclopaedia that is free to read". As for policy, well I'm sure before the year is out that Commons will have banned uploading new content with these restrictive terms. It would be great if FP was ahead of the game rather than continue to embarrass the community. Colin°Talk 08:27, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Saffron's comment is not mistaken. If wikimedia as a matter of policy disallowed GDFL for certain media, like images, then we wouldn't be having this silly debate again. GDFL is not a suitable license for images within the "free culture" context. Fix it for the whole of wikimedia not just FPC. Anything less is suspect in my opinion. Saffron Blaze (talk) 15:05, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm quite certain that will happen and I'll be working on that later. As I said before, I didn't start this discussion on en:WP, and didn't particularly want it to happen here, but it is happening so it might as well reach a conclusion. And I started the com:FP debate because the issue kept coming up at com:FP and needed settling. I think it is valid (though I don't agree) for someone to think the GFDL licence could be kept for uploads for some pragmatic reason, while also believing it doesn't qualify as "our best" hence not for FP. But also, I'm sure that when the debate to start banning uploads with this wretched licence begins, someone would have said "How can images with such licences be banned when the community regularly awards them "featured picture" and regards them as "our best"?" At least now we can say the community does not regard them as "our best". The fact that only two people on en:wp regularly use it shows just how minority it has become. Quite why a few other people support them in this, I don't understand. Colin°Talk 16:50, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Anyone that argues GDFL is a useful license it a prat in the first place. It's a stupid fucking license even for texts. That aside, what will you do when this finally goes to global decision and GDFL by some strange twist of fate wins approval as an acceptable license? This outcome is not as implausible as it might seem, as all the -NC malcontents might get their final digs in. In that event you will be confronted with both FP projects being in some level of tension with wikimedia policy and open to additional challenges on the same question. If this had started from the top and succeeded it would have rolled on down hill quite easily for cause. Instead we are forced to push the turd up the hill.
As to our two GDFL users. If they are doing this simply to prevent re-use outside wikimedia then they should consider leaving. I have not returned to contributing files due to commercial re-use concerns. I am just not there yet with donating my work for free so others can make a profit from it. If wikimedia is a charity I should get a tax receipt for my donations. That's another debate though. Saffron Blaze (talk) 17:08, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "GFDL is not a suitable license for images within the "free culture" context. Fix it for the whole of Wikimedia not just FPC. It's a stupid fucking license even for texts." - Saffron, you rocks! JKadavoor Jee 17:20, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding about Wikimedia’s stand against NC license according to Erik Möller is: "It's been Wikimedia's long-standing position that allowing commercial re-use contributes to its educational mission (the negative impact of stupid commercial uses is outweighed by the positive impact of educational, commercial uses), and that position is unlikely to change." - I think it is true. Think about an educational text book printed with my pictures for sale. Am I really wanted to discourage it? No; in my case. I wish one day CC will design a license CC-BY-EU (for educational use only). JKadavoor Jee 17:32, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The concept of "non-commercial" is actually quite vague and open to interpretation. The classic example is a blogger using a picture on their site run from their bedroom. Sounds NC until you realise their blog has adverts. Then their blog doesn't really sound that different from a newspaper. Just scale and professionalism. Is a charity "non-commercial"? Perhaps their educational fact-sheets are. But what about the adverts they run for donations? And what if the back-page of their fact-sheets request donations? And so on. Ultimately if folk want to control reuse or make money from their pictures then don't donate them here. Full stop. There's scope to do both perhaps, but with different pictures.
Photographers are hypocritical bunch wrt free donations of their images imo. Just look at their Android phones or browser they use to look at their pictures. All work donated by programmers and used commercially. I've no problem with folk deciding to charge for their work or wanting to control reuse. But those doing this for free, as a without-strings donation, aren't stupid or mugs. Their reward is measured differently, that's all. Colin°Talk 20:22, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No body said they were stupid. In fact many work for free now in hopes of future gains through experience, connections, quid pro quo, mutual support for commercial endeavours, etc. Saffron Blaze (talk) 20:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jjron: "I really don't understand the screwy thinking that says we should be making donations to multimillion dollar businesses. It's utterly contemptible. ... Yet you would have us giving all our work away to these morally bankrupt concerns without an even vague way of controlling it. This is bizarre. " Yeah, all the folk who made Google the billion dollar business it is now through their donations of free software. They've got screwy thinking and are utterly contemptible. And that chap who gave away the World Wide Web for free. You know it is mostly used for "morally bankrupt" porn and stuff and he has like no way of preventing that. This is really bizarre. Not. Colin°Talk 22:00, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What Mr Berners-Lee did was noble but it wasn't without its rewards: http://www.zdnet.com/berners-lee-wins-1m-prize-3039158270/ As to Google, their new image search is in most photographer's minds a blatant violation of copyright. Saffron Blaze (talk) 01:02, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We're getting off-topic a bit here, the point was great things have come from those who give away their stuff for free without strings. Sure these people do bad things too. Mohammed/Jjron's restrictive licensing, where they act as gatekeeper for reuse, is just completely at odds with Wikimedia's goals. Don't they realise most of the world doesn't speak English for a start -- yet their images will be used in Wikipedias of all languages, and could have been used in teaching material in all countries of the world. But they wont because a teacher preparing the lesson for tomorrow in some French-speaking part of Africa can't email Jjron for permission. -- Colin°Talk 08:31, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If that kind of scenario was actually occurring I would genuinely be surprised. Of the 40 so request/notifications of image use I have received have all been medium/large companies. On the other hand most of the copyright violations have been bloggers trying to boost ad revenue, but there have been some rather well to do companies that have also violated the copyright provisions of CC-BY-SA. In effect I seem to be lining the pockets of people that have no interest in free culture. While acknowledging the example of the Wiki DVD, I don't know of another single example of an educational use in the spirit of "free culture" with any of my works. Saffron Blaze (talk) 17:17, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You are forgetting that your work is licensed with a decent choice of licence that is clear for re-users to understand and appropriate for the media. They have no need to ask your permission (provided the attribution requirement is ok for their use) and that is as it should be. You are also assuming that re-use is on the web where you can detect it. It might well be in a student handout, a lecturer's slides or for a church quiz night -- all of which escape your radar. Some of the re-users below the radar will be the kind of folk who ignore the licence anyway ("if it is on the internet it must be free") but others will care and simply not use the GFDL images. Those wikipedians using the GFDL licences also won't really know the scale of the trouble they cause because the vast majority of folk will give up at the first hurdle -- there are other pictures they can use perhaps, but sadly not as good. Wikipedia is an Open Educational Resource. Colin°Talk 18:53, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No Colin, I am not forgetting I used CC-BY-SA (stop that crap:)). I wasn't drawing a distinction between it and GDFL. I was intimating that this notion of the little 3rd world teacher using wikipedia "free culture" works may exist, but on scale that is dwarfed by commercial re-use by companies and individuals that could afford to pay for those works. In the "free culture" world this state of affairs is perfectly acceptable, as the needs of the one outweigh the greed of the many. For those that make some or all their income from photography (not me) that is a hard philosophical pill to swallow. Moreover, "free culture" actually represents a threat to commercial photography. If commons is populated with thousands of FP quality images that people can use for free then what happens to the stock photo industry? As you said... well off topic but perhaps some insight as to why some people resist "free culture". Saffron Blaze (talk) 22:04, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We all have different philosophies in life wrt reward and that's fine. We all also have different philosophies wrt worrying about some bad guy taking advantage. I don't think "free culture" is a threat to photography in the same way that free software hasn't been a threat to commercial software -- indeed it positively thrives on it and we wouldn't be where we are without it. What does damage commercial software is apps for pennies and the counterpart in photography is microstock. Very few gets rich in either field and those who run the marketplace are the real winners. Colin°Talk 22:49, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can't disagree with any of that. Software thrives to some degree on open source because of the sheer complexity of even simple apps let alone operating systems. In photography the trend has been towards microstock because it is becoming easier to get decent stock images, but even that is under threat by deals that agencies are now making. Recently Getty Images licensed to Google 12,000 professional stock images. The terms of the license allows Google's customers (hundreds of millions of them) to re-use these images for commercial purposes!! The photographers got $12 for for each image that was effectively bought out. In this case I think the photographers would have got more value, if not cash, in donating them to Wiki. Saffron Blaze (talk) 13:41, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've no problem if somebody offers big awards to our big contributors. But begging for it not makes much sense to me. Probably they are thinking big. JKadavoor Jee 01:57, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On the GFDL wording

There's a good chance those commenting above haven't actually studied the GFDL. It is a free licence suitable for long textual works. It is widely acknowledged as not practical for images and short texts. So here it is. Let's see how someone using a picture of a butterfly along with a paragraph of text from the Wikipedia article, sets about using in in a slide presentation.

  • "The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free"" Hmm. I'm confused. I've got a JPG of a butterfly here. That's not a manual or textbook and I'm sure it isn't a document, whether functional or useful.
  • "We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation" Hmm. I'm pretty sure a JPG of a butterfly isn't a manual for free software.
  • "But this License is not limited to software manuals" Ahh. Good. Now we're getting somewhere. "; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter". Oh dang. There's no text on my butterfly.
  • "We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference" I just chose this butterfly because it is pretty and I like butterflies.
  • Hmm, the "APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS" section talk a lot about the "Document" and "title page" and "cover texts". This is just a single image.
  • "You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License" What? You mean if I use this picture of a butterfly, I've got to add a 3,700-word legal document to my work? I've just pasted this into Word and it took 6.5 pages. If I showed this on an projector it would take 50 slides and consume about an hour of my presentation for folk to read. I just wanted a picture of a butterfly.
  • The whole purpose of a licence is to grant the reuser rights they would not normally have under copyright. If there is any doubt the licence applies to them, the reuser can't use the work at all as they may then breach copyright. Someone reading the above licence would (a) be very unsure the licence applies to images at all and (b) be practically unable to make use of it in many ways, because of the onerous requirements. The result is that the image isn't reused, and we have failed in our mission to provide free content. We should not celebrate such failure in the Featured Pictures. Colin°Talk 11:19, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"The result is that the image isn't reused..." That is exactly what "we" need. Be pragmatic; pretend that we care contributing freely, use all possible loop holes in the system to block any possibility for a free use. JKadavoor Jee 15:22, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What a lovely homily. The problem is you may just as well substitute you claim for someone wanting to use GFDL licensed text in a one-page flyer. "What? So I've got to attach this 3,700 word license to my flyer...". Or Powerpoint. Or whatever. Same thing. If you want to ban GFDL licensing in toto, then this is clearly the wrong forum. --jjron (talk) 05:02, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah you fall into the evil trap I have set :-). All Wikipedia's text is dual-licensed with CC BY-SA, so the one-page flyer can pick that licence instead of the stupid GFDL one. But the flyer can't use the butterfly as an illustration, no way as it would then become a booklet! The problems with GFDL for short texts are well-known and why Wikitravel doesn't use it at all. So you're wrong: I don't want to ban GFDL licence in toto -- folk can add whatever extra licences they like, as long as they pick one that is truly practically free. Colin°Talk 08:16, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Um, actually no, cos I wasn't talking about Wikipedia specifically, merely about - and let me quote - "GFDL licensed text". As if I don't already know Wikipedia text isn't solely GFDL licensed... --jjron (talk) 12:52, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well I was talking about Wikipedia specifically. Your example is therefore irrelevant to the discussion, yet you claim your example is "the problem" with the "lovely homily". The problems with GFDL is precisely why Wikipedia moved towards dual licensing and why new wiki projects just don't use it at all. Yes GFDL sole licensing is already "banned" for Wikipedia -- everyone must dual licence their images. If folk dual licensed GFDL with CC BY-SA or FAL, say, then that is absolutely fine. Colin°Talk 12:58, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • A few comments in reply to Colin:
    • Firstly 99% of users of online digital content do not care if they are breaching copyright. They see a picture, they like it, they take it, they use it. If X want's a pretty picture of a butterfly for a powerpoint, he does a search in Google Images, picks out the nicest one and sticks it in. End of story. Copyright breach? Meh. The only people who actually care about copyright are organisations and corporations (and even then most of the time the employees will breach copyright and pinch the photo off the internet - I've had countless occasions where this has happened to my images). So your little story above is almost entirely hypothetical.
    • Secondly, if you've bothered to read the CC licences, they can in fact be more onerous than the GFDL for online usage. For example, the CC-BY-SA 2.5 licence (which your good friends from Norden use) require the user to "attribute the work in the manner specified by the author". Now that is incredibly broad. In theory I could demand a five paragraph attribution clause which occupies no smaller area than 25% of the reproduced image. By contrast, using a GFDL image online is probably as simple as inserting a hyperlinked bit of text to the licence. Hardly taxing. In fact even leaving aside the extreme example I just gave, the GFDL hyperlink is probably going to be less conspicuous than a "normal" attribution line and would therefore be preferable to many users. It is therefore quite incorrect to brand the GFDL as this unparalleled horror licence with no practical operation as a free licence.
--Fir0002 03:18, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But does that actually happen in practice? If a user really were abusing CC-BY-SA by demanding an extremely long attribution, we could always nominate their images for deletion under WP:IAR. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:46, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Fir0002's interpretation of attribution requirements is insufficient. The license states that attribution has to be given in a manner reasonable to the medium (as long as core data in author name etc. is not omitted). CC licenses are designed deliberately flexible for reusers. What Fir wrote above is plain old FUD. His first point is also certainly not an argument for GFDL, if anything it is one against it. We have to make reuse easier not harder, and a CC-BY license can be summarized as "Please state Photo by Fir0002 / CC-BY near the picture". But I have a suspicion that these facts are absolutely clear to everyone involved in this discussion. --Dschwen 20:54, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree lots of folk steal stuff off the internet, there are honest folk (my Photoshop is legit!) who care about licensing. I want us to help make it easy for folk to be honest, as Dschwen says. My "friends" from Norden say "Available for free use provided the source is credited (e.g. Photographer Name - norden.org)". Their image homepage says "You can search here in our image database The majority of the images may be used without restriction provided that you mention the image source." It couldn't be easier for someone to be honest with their images. Your hypothetical about their licence is irrelevant. What is relevant is that all the folk here, you included, who use GFDL do so deliberately to restrict reuse (particularly commercial) and none of you want to engage in discussing that because it is unarguably against the principles of the site. You'd rather deflect. It is rather sad, this cynical view of humanity, and all this angst about bad people using our images. Colin°Talk 21:25, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

File:Dred Scott photograph (circa 1857).jpg

Dred Scott

I'm kinda on the fence with this, and because PPR is dead I thought I'd bring it here. The photograph is fairly high resolution and has been restored by several editors. It seems to be the only extant photograph of Scott, whose Supreme Court case was fairly important in US history. However, the pose is rather awkward and something seems to be off with his eyes. Do others think this image would qualify it for FPC despite the technical shortcomings? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This might sound like an odd question, but is the subject alive? I believe it was not uncommon to photograph the dead and the subject died in 1858, only a year after the case. Basing it on the odd look he has. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:11, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if [4] would be better? Although it's not a photo... Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, he was definitely alive. Death photos made clear that they were of the dead. The trouble with this one is simply that it was so badly damaged in the first place that the editors have had to invent a lot. That creates some weird bits, such as the blurry line between the hair and the (largely artificial) background. As for the eyes, what you're seeing is motion blur--Scott, presumably unused to posing for photographs, was unable to keep his eyes still during the duration of the exposure (which would have been quite long). Chick Bowen 21:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, if he were dead at the time of sitting I doubt his suit would have been as frumpled. There's a bit of a back story, but this looks like it's for the below picture.
I doubt a sketch would have as much EV though... as an aside, PBS was wrong: there is another photo — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It looks very blurry at full resolution. The subject has a similar expression and general appearance in the other photo. Perhaps his eyes are so wide because he was trying extra hard to keep them open for the reason Chick Bowen explained. As for the awkward pose, his head was probably held still with a clamp . I heard someone talking about the Dred Scott case recently. They were saying it was only the second time the U.S. Supreme Court decided on the constitutionality of a law, the first time being Marbury vs. Madison. —rybec 00:14, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've done a bit of work with photos from that era, and something looks horribly off about it. I think that it's been saved as a very low-quality JPEG, then possibly blurred a bit to remove the artefacts, or something like that. Look around his eyes, and at the bottom left of his jacket. If we can find a better scan, I will commit to doing the restoration, though. Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:03, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Messed up candidate page

Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone knows what i've done wrong with my nomination. You can view it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George-W-Bush.jpeg

I haven't transcluded it as I was worried it might mess up the page. ★★RetroLord★★ 11:50, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominations

I would like to nominate the following for featured picture:

I would also like to nominate all the following, which I have copied from Photochrom:

I do not have permissions to create the nomination page, so if anyone is interested perhaps they could do it on my behalf 86.146.107.128 (talk) 20:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • PS, I've just noticed that, by an amazing coincidence, one of these, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, is currently up for nomination. I was not aware of that when I posted the above. That is a bit spoooky! 86.146.107.128 (talk) 20:39, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note that several of these are already FPs in some form. I'll mark those off. The remaining are probably worth it, although I suspect a new restoration would be wise for most of them. We've gotten better with photochroms over time. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:23, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I did not know that many of those were already FPs. But why are there so many duplicates? Shouldn't we get rid of the duplicates and just have one copy? 86.177.107.46 (talk) 20:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, not duplicates but original scans and restored versions. Any idea why the filenames of the unprocessed images were chosen so poorly? --Dschwen 21:48, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, no idea. I had no involvement with the creation or uploading of any of these. I just came across them and was struck by how attractive and interesting they were. Having perviously complained at the Main Page about the number of featured photos of birds, and having been told that there was a shortage of featured picture candidates, I thought I would nominate these to help bump up the numbers. 86.177.107.46 (talk) 00:19, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Issue

File:Dogcart3.jpg Is an FP, but does not appear in any FP gallery. Any idea what's going on there? Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:26, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it was missed after its nomination or it was missed when the last re-categorization was done. I think that image could go in Wikipedia:Featured pictures/People/Others or in Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Vehicles/Land. --Pine✉ 03:42, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Added it to Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Vehicles/Land. Armbrust The Homunculus 09:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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