Hey Alexander
TL:DR. Please, bare in mind that Common community have policies
regarding copyright which they will never ignore for a contest like
this. Thus, you need not lose your cool and make personal remarks in
accusing reviewers of intimidating WLM participants. Such assertion
is untrue because we are in this together. We should not pretend that
what we are experiencing now is expected. I agree with Lodewijk that
Wikimedia Commons community is not always easy or fun to work with but
we just have to deal with it. There are thousands of files waiting for
review and there are few regular users patrolling new files or
reviewing them. If a reviewer nominate a file for deletion in a way
you consider inappropriate, try to discuss with the user. The reviewer
could be under stress as at the time they were reviewing the files.
BTW, it's a red flag when username don't seem to match with copyright
information on metadata, thus reviewer may decide to nominate such
files for deletion per our precautionary principle. This is not
uncommon and such actions are usually not considered destructive or
attacks on participant. Alexander, your username is "User:Atsrlin" and
if on your camera metadata, the author is "Merlin" for example,
reviewer may not assume that your real name is Merlin unless you
already state it on your user page or elsewhere because Atsrlin could
mean something totally different in your country and may be
unconnected with Merlin. In reality, you're Alexander and Merlin is a
different person who may probably come around to raise concerns about
infringement of their copyright in the future.
Here is another participant, User:James John Borg
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/James_John_Borg>.
Looking at the metadata of their uploads
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/James_John_Borg>,
it shows that the copyright holder of the files is "*Joshua
Schembri*". Should a reviewer simply assume that "James John Borg" is
the same person as "Joshua Schembri"? In most cases uploaders are not
always sincere when it comes to copyright issues if you merely ask
them. This is why we usually advice them to send evidence to our
support team (COM:OTRS) after taking the files to DR.
However, I'm a bit reluctant to nominate User:James John Borg's files
for deletion but I don't have enough time to investigate it now, maybe
someone familiar with the user can take it up.
Best,
Isaac (User:Wikicology)
On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Lodewijk <lodew...@effeietsanders.org
<mailto:lodew...@effeietsanders.org>> wrote:
Hey Alexander,
Assuming good faith is always good - even if you have to work
harder for it. It makes the interactions more pleasant and the
work more fun. So I will always recommend to keep doing it - even
if it goes against your natural response.
The case where the names don't seem to match seems like a valid
case to me to ask questions, and this process is (unfortunately)
the process being used for that at Wikimedia Commons. It is
uncomfortable, but it is what we have to deal with. Because there
are so many pictures, there is a bunch to be expected.
I'm not going to pretend that the Wikimedia Commons community is
always easy or fun to work with - but their intentions are usually
good. They are very tough on copyright, and very suspicious. While
these are some disadvantages, it does allow us to use a lot of
shared infrastructure, and makes competitions like this one
possible on an international scale. Please do realise that the
number of uploads typically raises with 30-100% during Wiki Loves
Monuments, and this puts some stress/strain on the reviewers too.
Best,
Lodewijk
2016-09-17 8:58 GMT+02:00 Alexander Tsirlin <altsir...@gmail.com
<mailto:altsir...@gmail.com>>:
Rather than complaining to the process could you please for
once think that this is your project too and everyone in this
together?
It is not my project. Like many other people, I am forced to
use it as a common image repository, even though I
emphatically do not want to. As you probably know, before
migrating to WMF servers Wikivoyage had its own image
repository, and we wanted to keep it, because it was much
better organized than Commons, and we did not want other
people to impose their rules and practices of "nominating
everything for deletion" on images that we have carefully
collected ourselves.
Unfortunately, our request was ignored by the WMF, so yes, we
are also in this strange thing that was supposed to be a
common project, but is in fact run by a handful of people who
believe that unjustified and well-hidden deletion requests are
the best way to solve all problems. But it stinks, and we try
to be as far from it as possible.
Your experience of license review for WLM Bangladesh might be
interesting if we would ever have time to do this. At the
moment, I spend most of my free time on finding and fighting
these well-hidden deletion requests. Thank you, my dear
Commons community, for creating such a wonderful working
environment.
Sincerely,
Alexander
On 17.09.2016 11:32, Nahid Sultan wrote:
Though it seems a bit odd but on a commons perspective it is
also a normal procedure. Commons has a huge issue with people
finding images online and then uploading them as their own
work, so regular contributors on commons can sometimes be
overzealous in making sure that people actually have the
right to release what they are releasing. That is where the
OTRS system comes in. Rather than complaining to the process
could you please for once think that this is your project too
and everyone in this together?
We, from WLM Bangladesh team have created a work-board/list
for such users who have problem with metadata, previously
published same image on other media to make sure that they
are actually own the copyright. we even created a hand book
for reviewers explaining what to look during the review
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM>).
So, every reviewer check for those mistakes when reviewing an
image then if they found such problematic user they
immediately contact them via email or talk page and list them
on
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM/possible_copyright_problem
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM/possible_copyright_problem>.
It works for us.
Best,
Nahid Sultan
User:NahidSultan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan>on all
Wikimedia Foundation
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation>'s public
wikis
Secretary, Wikimedia Bangladesh
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh>
Twitter: @nahidunlimited <https://twitter.com/nahidunlimited>
http://blog.nahidsultan.xyz/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* WikiLovesMonuments
<wikilovesmonuments-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>
<mailto:wikilovesmonuments-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org> on
behalf of Alexander Tsirlin <altsir...@gmail.com>
<mailto:altsir...@gmail.com>
*Sent:* Saturday, September 17, 2016 11:09 AM
*To:* Wiki Loves Monuments Photograph Competition
*Subject:* Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] WLM photos are deleted
on Commons
Now it is not only about Freedom of Panorama and non-free images.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_VekaSpb
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_VekaSpb>
Here, one Commons user nominates a bunch of excellent photos for
deletion after he sees that the user name does not match the
name in
EXIF, even though the connection between the two is pretty
obvious. This
deletion request has been closed yesterday, but it still
costed me a lot
of time and a long e-mail exchange with the uploader, where I
tried to
convince her that everything is fine, and this deletion
request was only
a mistake. Yes, just a small mistake, really...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_PhotoJinn
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_PhotoJinn>
Here, the same user nominates for deletion some photos of a
13th century
cathedral claiming that there is no freedom of panorama. What???!
---------------------------------------
That's a very systematic course of action against us taking
place on
Commons. It would be silly to assume good faith here.
Best,
Alexander
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