Wikivoyage talk:Image policy/old-en archive

Can't we use a slightly different policy for images?

Moved from travellers' pub by (WT-en) Evan

I userstand that Wikivoyage uses "Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0" license. But this includes the clause "allowed to make commercial use of the work". When images submitted here are personal work, it is difficult to assign such a clause to the images. If there is any way to change just the "allowed to make commercial use of work" part, I would be glad to share some of the snaps I have taken during my travel. - (WT-en) Srijith

There is actually a Creative Commons license for non-commercial work -- the Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike -- but we don't use it. One of our goals is to have Wikivoyage content included in commercial guidebooks and other commercial content. The idea is that we can improve existing guidebooks and content with good user-contributed stuff.

The fact is, however nice it is to have Web-based guides, or printouts of individual articles, it's really nice to have a real guidebook in your hand or backpack. I'm looking forward to the time when someone uses Wikivoyage content to make books. They're going to need to sell them to recoup losses and make it worthwhile. I guess I just don't see a way that we can let our content be used for guidebooks, but just not commercial ones.

It would be possible -- but difficult for the site admin (me), since it would require quite a bit of hacking of the software -- to set up things so that different pieces of content have different licenses. But, for my part, that seems to throw up a lot of roadblocks for anyone using our content. They have to go through and find which pieces meet licenses they can live with, and which don't, and try to separate those pieces out.

It would be a real hassle to try to change what license we use right now, anyways. I understand that you don't feel comfortable putting up your pictures for commercial use, and that's fine. I guess I'd just say that you could either put them up on the Web somewhere else with a non-commercial-use license, or not use them. I really appreciate that you took the time to look over the license and decide if you agreed with it or not, by the way. That was really excellent. -- (WT-en) Evan 16:46, 7 Nov 2003 (PST)

"minimum number of images"

Alright, sparing use of images is alright. Don't over do it though with the anti-image attitude. In my opinion it is very important to have images of what a place looks like, not only for visual reference but also quite frankly to "sell" a place. Dunno about you, but I do every so often find myself looking at a picture saying wow I want to visit this some day,

If someone is on a very slow link, they should turn off images entirely anyway. Hey, some people might be blind and can't use images at all, too. That doesn't mean to leave them out. On a more serious note, might it be possible to have an article with the images included, but turned off (like you can turn off the table of contents), then click on a link to load the images? Just an idea. -- (WT-en) Nils 13:45 Jan 13th, 2004 CET

Well, this kind of brings up another point. Photographs of a place are really great for the armchair traveller, but less useful to someone actually at the destination. We have a goal to serve both groups.

Also, the information content of photographs goes down precipitously with the number of images you see. The first image of the Pyramids at Giza you see, you're gonna go, "Wow! I want to go see those." The second image you see -- maybe from a different angle -- you'll say, "Oh, yeah, those again." So, I think the idea behind "minimal" images is that you should use just enough photos to pack the maximum punch.

Other kinds of images -- like maps -- can be a real information treasure trove.

I think the whole idea is: get the most information on the page you can, but keep the page as small as you can. --(WT-en) Evan 11:46, 13 Jan 2004 (EST)

I believe images can be very informative and formally restricting their number does more harm than good. Certainly the images should provide specific information about the place. Therefore the picture of a castle or city panorama or another landmark will usually make more sense than a pic of a cat or bird. Other than that it would be good to restrict to no more than one image of the same object in a single article. Otherwise I do not see the benefit of restricting the number of illustration. If I'm on a slow or expensive link, I simply turn of images in my browser, that's it. Content presentation is the task on client-side not server side. I'm for keeping it image-rich where it makes sense. (WT-en) Wojsyl 20:33, 31 Dec 2004 (EST)

SVG source files

The Project:Mapmaking Expedition talks about the idea of uploading source files used to generate a map image, in SVG format. But this Image Policy page makes no mention of this. Could be because the map making ideas have ground to a halt a bit. -- (WT-en) Nojer2 07:01, 7 Dec 2004 (EST)

image size

Finally, image sizes: It would make much more sense - though this requires support in mediawiki - to upload the biggest resolution possible, then scale them down at run time (cached) to a lesser size. Remember, you can always discard information you do not wish to use, but it's impossible to get back discarded information. -- (WT-en) Nils 13:45 Jan 13th, 2004 CET

Apparently there's some work going on to do this in MediaWiki. I'm not sure when it'll be available. --(WT-en) Evan 11:33, 13 Jan 2004 (EST)

Evan, now that you've added thumbnailing, what is the expected policy regarding use of images? Shall we upload at max resolution (as suggested by Nils above) and then use thumbnails? I've really felt that many images that could be uploaded to set the scene (e.g., to provide a representative sample of what the eastern sierra looks like) are severely degraded by the current small-format requirement.. Is disk space an issue? Also, my full res images are too big IMO (2200 pixels across), so what max res should we use for the full-sized image (Damn it's hard to type with a baby in one arm) -- (WT-en) Colin 14:54, 6 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Camera phone images

On the earlier camera phones at least, these images tend to be anything from 300k upto 1 or 2Mb -i.e. starting from 640x480 pixels. I would imagine that there are a lot more of these available than good digital camera ones at higher resolution. So what is the policy here? If there is no image of some place, is it acceptable to upload a relatively low quality phone camera image and replace it later when a higher resolution one becomes available?

I know that we already have camera-phone images (and not necessarily state-of-the-art phones); I've does some clean-up work on a few of them. The issue with phones isn't so much the resolution, but the quality of the lens and the color/contrast of the image. A photo that's high enough resolution to use in print is better, but one that looks OK at 300px wide on the computer screen should be fine. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 09:29, 23 June 2007 (EDT)

Interpertation of License and Allowable credit on Photos

I have a couple of questions/thoughts before I start donating some of my images for use on the webpage.

1. I assume that the license would only apply to the version of the image that was uploaded. Therefore, if I were to upload an 200x400 pixel image, I could still sell and fight copyright abuses of higher resolution versions of the picture. Can anybody correct me if they think I am wrong on this.
2. Allowability of including unobtrusive credit text on the image with contact information (website or email address). Is there Wikivoyage rules that disallow this? I couldn't find them, but none of the uploaded images that I saw have this.

(WT-en) Webgeer 15:20, Jul 26, 2004 (EDT)

The license applies to the version you uploaded, as well as any modified versions people make. Since you're the copyright holder of the original, you could sell the original version or any other version you have copyright to. However, there's no license stipulation that would keep people from blowing the image up to a larger size, or shrinking it, cropping it, fixing it any other way.

If you have any images where you're worried about releasing the image under the license, just don't upload them.

There aren't any rules against credit text, but I find them kinda distracting. The next version of MediaWiki will have image credits at the bottom of the page, along with all the other credits.

One last thing: images won't just be released for use "on the webpage". They'll be available for anyone to use for just about any purpose -- see Project:copyleft for details. --(WT-en) Evan 16:20, 26 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Also note that you can include all sorts of credit info on the Image page itself, although naturally this won't follow along if the image is used outside Wikivoyage. Still, adding credit info to the image itself makes life more difficult for others, as it may no longer be possible to resize or crop the image should the need arise. (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:27, 27 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Privacy, multimedia

I rolled back changes to the privacy notes and multimedia policy. If someone wants to change information about privacy law, please discuss it on Project:privacy rights (with some documentation, please). If someone wants to change our goals, please bring it up on Project:goals and non-goals. --(WT-en) Evan 18:01, 15 Nov 2004 (EST)

commons

hi, should we probably think about also using commons.wikipedia.org? Uploading pictures here again which already exist in commons should IMHO be avoided. The Policy should be changed this way. -- 84.128.43.101 04:56, 4 Jan 2005 (EST)

Unfortunately Wikipedia uses a different license from ours, and the two are incompatible. So we can't share images. Nor, for that matter is Wikivoyage part of the same foundation as Wikipedia. We are a completely separate entity, and that is unlikely to change any time soon. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:49, 4 Jan 2005 (EST)

Basically correct, but quite a few Wikipedians are now adopting a dual-license system, which lets us use their work. I've added a note attempting to sort this out. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:19, 4 Feb 2005 (EST)

If there is a clear statement somewhere of the recommended general-purpose procedure for uploading and linking to images, I'd be grateful if someone pointed to it. In general I'm a bit confused about the recommended method for pointing to content on other Wikimedia pages. The directions for interlanguage linking are clear but the others are a bit sketchy. If someone could just point to an example of a page where the proper procedures have been used, I'll bookmark it and use that as a reference. I tried to copy the method used on the main page, but assuredly uplading a file twice to Commons and Wikivoyage is a waste of storage? (That's what's been done with the West Lake, Hangzhou, China image if I'm not mistaken!

Audio clips

Should an explicit exception be made to allow audio clips in phrasebook pronunciation guides? See Romanian phrasebook for a good example. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:19, 4 Feb 2005 (EST)

I think not; I think the utility of audio clips in phrasebooks is really limited. The Wikivoyage phrasebooks I've used have had no audio pronunciation stuff, and they've been fine. --(WT-en) Evan 08:02, 4 Feb 2005 (EST)

So are you going to nuke the clips in Romanian phrasebook? What harm are they doing? (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:38, 5 Feb 2005 (EST)

They are not really images on pages, but only links to external audio files. This means they do not download autoamtically when you're opening a page, thus doing no harm. I'd vote for allowing audio files unless there's a good reason not to (someone will claim again that they wouldn't print nicely ;-) ) (WT-en) Wojsyl 05:41, 5 Feb 2005 (EST)

Bump. This came up again when User:(WT-en) TalkieToaster tried to add a whole bunch of pronounciation files to the Japanese phrasebook. I do think these have obvious value, and the proper response shouldn't be to ban them entirely, but to figure out some way to make the links non-printing. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:48, 7 November 2006 (EST)

I also think that audio files should have a special dispensation. I found them and they really helped me as a beginner at the Japanese language, as I have trouble with pronunciations. I wanted to share them, and I really can't see the harm in that. In reply to (WT-en) Evan's comment, just because something is "fine" doesn't mean it can't be made better! (WT-en) Talkie_Toaster 10:29, 8 November 2006 (EST)

My main concern with audio clips is that they're too Web-centric. We need to have pronunciation guides on the phrasebooks that are useful for printed versions, and audio clips are a disincentive to write them out. In addition, it's hard to keep the audio clips in synch with the written phrases.

Audio files are not a "disincentive" to print them out, all the information is exactly the same on the printout, the only difference is that the web users have a little more help with the pronunciation.(WT-en) Talkie_Toaster 19:25, 8 November 2006 (EST)

You say, "I found them... I wanted to share them...". Does that mean the clips you uploaded are copied from somewhere? Was it with the permission of the copyright holder, and can they be distributed according to our copyleft license? --(WT-en) Evan 10:24, 8 November 2006 (EST)

They were copyrighted, what I was doing was linking to them, not distributing them. I was not the one that uploaded them, they are linked to the original webpage that I got them from.(WT-en) Talkie_Toaster 19:07, 8 November 2006 (EST)

Bumpity-bump. I'd like to raise this issue again: I've never really understood why audio clips are entirely prohibited, and to address Evan's points one by one:

• "They're too Web-centric."
  • I'm the guy doing the print guides, and I think it's easy enough to strip out any links ending in .ogg or whatever.

• "We need to have pronunciation guides on the phrasebooks that are useful for printed versions, and audio clips are a disincentive to write them out."
  • Why so? It's easier to write in pseudophonetics than to fiddle with microphones and editing software to create an audio clip.

• "In addition, it's hard to keep the audio clips in synch with the written phrases."
  • It's pretty hard to keep maps in sync with listings too.

Obviously clips need to be hosted on WT and CC by-sa licensed though, not just linked in from some random site. (WT-en) Jpatokal 14:04, 9 September 2007 (EDT)

I'm not excited about adding audio clips from the standpoint of someone who tries to patrol edits - it's going to be tough to check for copyvios with audio clips, it will be nearly impossible to determine if a clip is accurate or if someone is spouting the audio equivalent of goatse, etc. That said, audio clips could be very helpful for the phrasebooks, but if we're going to allow them I think we need some clear standards about what is appropriate, and at least initially I think we need to have some pretty high requirements for what is required for an audio clip to avoid deletion - at a minimum I would say that any audio file without a license specified should be deleted without question, and anything longer than about 30 seconds or that's not in a standard format (ogg, mp3) should also be a candidate for deletion. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:09, 9 September 2007 (EDT)

CC versions

Wikivoyage is under the CC-SA 1.0 license. Is that compatible with the 2.0 version. I know that material under version 1.0 is not automatically under version 2.0. But how about the other way? If a picture is relased under CC-SA 2.0 license can it be uploaded to Wikivoyage by someone other than the copyright owner? -- (WT-en) elgaard 08:51, 2 Mar 2005 (EST)

AFAICT, no. From http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode section 4b: You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under the terms of this License, a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License, or a Creative Commons iCommons license that contains the same License Elements as this License. It doesn't seem to be backwards-compatible. --(WT-en) Evan 15:01, 2 Mar 2005 (EST)

Sharing images between different language editions of Wikivoyage

Swept in from Pub

I was looking to link the photo from the French language article on St. Petersburg to the equivalent English language article, but this does not work. It appears that the different language versions have completely seperate sets of images.

One solution is obviously to download the image from the french version, and upload it to the english version. But this is both cumbersome, and it destroys the audit trail. Indeed a strict interpretation of the Project:Image policy suggests that I need the permission of the original photographer to do this.

Given that photographs are not generally linguistically specific, but other kinds of images like maps are, it would seem much better to have some sort of link mechanism that maintains only one copy of the image on the server. Any thoughts on the best way of going about this. -- (WT-en) Chris j wood 09:49, 13 Aug 2004 (EDT)

With the start of the German wikivoyage I also think that it is pretty redundant to upload the same picture (without any text on it) to different language versions. Is there any known way to share pictures? How does Wikipedia handle this?

Wikipedia has Wiki Commons. (WT-en) Guaka 18:06, 18 Nov 2004 (EST)

Link at Upload page

Hi there,

the link at the Upload site to this page is not working properly (at least not with IE6). It says Special:Image_use_policy, instead of Wikivoyage:Image_use_policy. Should be changed.

Cheers, (WV-en) Felix

Done. Thanks for the catch! --(WT-en) Evan 06:34, 28 Apr 2005 (EDT)

GIF patents

I was under the impression that GIF (or, rather, the underlying LZW compression algorithm) remains patented in some countries excluding the US — patent duration, time of application etc varies by country. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:10, 28 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Wikipedia say it expired in 2003 in the US, 2004 in Europe, Canada and Japan. It also says IBM has an LZW patent that expires in 2006. --(WT-en) elgaard 21:39, 28 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Dropping the 100k soft limit

Since Wikimedia has had automated thumbnails for a long time now, I suggest we drop the 100k soft limit. Otherwise printed guides will look like shit if you try to use 95% compressed 640x480 JPEGs... (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:27, 9 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I agree, unless we have a storage problem. I have uploaded some of mine to commons.wikipedia.org just to be sure there is a high quality version if we need it one day. It is not just printing. In a few years we might all have 40 inch 6000x4000 LCD monitors :-) --(WT-en) elgaard 17:18, 9 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Bump. If the server now allows up to 8 MB... (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:43, 16 Feb 2006 (EST)

1024x768 isn't really sufficient for printed images — at 300 PPI that's only 3x4". A half-page image (the most common size in guidebooks) would be 6x4.5", which needs at least 1536x2048 (3 megapixels). (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:17, 16 Feb 2006 (EST)

I threw out those numbers as a guesstimate; obviously the 100kb limit was impractical once we had thumbnails and was widely ignored. I'm not much of a photographer, and I'd appreciate it if you could update them to something appropriate for print.

We're not in (much) of a bandwidth or storage crunch, but some soft upper limit is a kindness to poor system administrators. Each 4Mb picture uploaded is one more chunk of data that we have to store, backup, etc. We don't have a big storage problem right now -- not even close to the limited storage we had back when Wikivoyage started -- but storage and bandwidth are finitely bounded.

Also, we don't have any fancy interface for uploading files, so uploading a multi-megabyte or higher image might be confusing for users. --(WT-en) Evan

Bumpity-bump. As our capitalist overlords are now taking care of storage, can we drop the 100k limit now? (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:10, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Technical requests work best if they're added to wts:technical requests. --(WT-en) Evan 09:08, 11 January 2007 (EST)

No, they don't. Shared is dysfunctional and ignored. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:11, 11 January 2007 (EST)

I've started wts:WtTech:100K soft limit on uploads too low. --(WT-en) evanp 11:44, 11 January 2007 (EST)

I think this is fixed. There's a hard limit at 8Mb, which I think is still OK for us. I've changed the config setting so you now get a warning message at 4Mb rather than 150Kb, which I think is just a courtesy. It's about twice the recommended pixel size, I think, and if you're up in that range you might bump into the hard limit of 8Mb, which will be a waste of time. I think at some higher sizes other software in the stack (browser, Web server) is going to time out or refuse to accept the upload.

I'm going to update the image policy page to say "try to stay under 4Mb, and really around 2Mb.`Sound fair? --(WT-en) evanp 12:17, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Sounds excellent. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:52, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Copyright and buildings/art

So I have done it again. First I put pictures of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen on WikiTravel and had to remove them because of danish copyright laws. Mark (User talk:Elgaard) told me that we danes have copyright laws more stupid than the US. It seems not. According to a Slashdot article I have again made WikiTravel violate copyright laws by adding pictures of the Millenium park in Chicago. This is becoming really stupid. Is there any experts on US copyright laws here. Should we delete my picture? Should we review all pictures of US art for possible copyright violations? P.S. I noticed that someone uploaded another picture of the little mermaid. --(WT-en) elgaard 11:27, 13 Feb 2005 (EST)

Don't believe everything you read on Slashdot -- the rule of thumb (in the US and most of the world) is that you can photograph anything or anybody you like in public places, which certainly includes parks, and the lawsuit in question is almost certainly untenable. To express that in a more legalistic way, a photograph of a sculpture (or any non-2D work of art) is a transformation that requires originality, not a straightforward reproduction (copy), and hence not a violation of copy'right. See http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm for more detail. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:23, 14 Feb 2005 (EST)

Yes, that is why I did not put this on Votes for Deletion. (WT-en) elgaard 07:42, 15 Feb 2005 (EST)

While you can take a photograph from any public place, publishing that photograph is another matter. See www.photosecrets.com for a discussion of this issue. Publishing a photograph of a copyrighted work is ok if it can be considered "Fair use", which covers the following cases: educational, research, news reporting, criticism, or public interest. Hanging a photo in your home falls under fair use, but publishing it on a web site could conceivably be seen as commercial usage and thus could require permission of the copyright owner.

We are talking commercial use. Wikivoyage is under CC-ShareAlike so we tell people that thay can e.g. put my picture in a book and sell that book (WT-en) elgaard 09:15, 16 Feb 2005 (EST)

Crediting images on article pages

If cc-by-sa 1.0 requires that all authors be credited, then if we pick up a cc-by-sa 1.0 image from elsewhere, should we credit all those who have worked on the image on the a) image page, b) article page? -- (WT-en) Ravikiran 02:10, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Image page, of course. One image can be used in lots and lots of articles. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:26, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

I wasn't asking an either/or question. If someone makes a printed guide, the individual image pages aren't likely to be part of the guides. Wouldn't the attribution issues in using Mediawiki templates apply here too? -- (WT-en) Ravikiran 03:07, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Yes, but the attribution data is automatically collected by Mediawiki on the image page. A printed guide is not going to use the thumbnails of the web page, but the original full-size versions, and it would be the printed guide publisher's responsibility to ensure that the attributions are read in from the image pages. (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:48, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Fair enough. thanks -(WT-en) Ravikiran 06:50, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

I'd like to enhance the code for in-page credits to include credits for images in the page, too. Good point. --(WT-en) Evan 09:23, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Images

Swept in from Project:Travellers' pub:

There seems to be a chronic lack of images in wikivoyage (at least compared to other printed travel guides I've seen) - I understand that only images licenced with cc-by-sa-1.0 can be used? What are the barriers to the 2.0 being used for images? -- (WT-en) Joolz 10:51, 2 May 2005 (EDT)

Well, Project:Image policy actually recommends "Minimal use of images ... no more images than are necessary to get across a point or impression should be used", although this has so far been applied with a good deal of common sense (generally only duplicate or utterly pointless images get trimmed). But while anybody can take travel snaps, it's not that easy to get the "guidebook quality" shots that we want here.

And license incompatibility is a biggie, not so much with cc-by-sa v2.0 (not too many of those floating around) but with GFDL, which means that eg. most of Wikimedia Commons is off-limits. Most Wikipedia photographers will, however, gladly dual license on request. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:03, 2 May 2005 (EDT)

I think many destinations have excellent images. Many especially minor distinations do not have images. One reason is probably that WikiTravel is young and there is a backlog--Some of the contributed material come from memory a couple of years back, but unfortunately we cannot contribute images from memory. We might have old pictures, but they were not made for WikiTravel and are usually polluted by people. In a couple of months a lot of travellers will for the first time go on vacation with a camera and make photos exclusively for WikiTravel. Expect a lot of Italian destination images from me. --(WT-en) elgaard 13:54, 2 May 2005 (EDT)

Does that mean if there are suitable images that are appropriate to use which are licenced with cc-by-sa-2.0, you can use them? (If so, how do you link an image from the commons here?) -- 80.229.143.117 03:39, 3 May 2005 (EDT)

No, unfortunately v2.0 images cannot be used in v1.0. See [1]. 202.176.111.155 07:13, 3 May 2005 (EDT)

Yes, that is unfortunate. I can understand that CC made it so to motivate people to switch to CC2.0 but it is a problem for us especially because we cannot move CC1.0 to CC2.0 without permission of every contributer. If we ask for permission to use a CC2.0 on WikiTravel I think we will get it in most cases. You should not link, download and upload them to WikiTravel. If you use konqueror you can do it in one step, just use the image URL in the upload form. -- (WT-en) elgaard 08:38, 3 May 2005 (EDT)

Why not allow any free license for images, just like Wikipedia does?
Other question that pops up: why is there no effort to start asking permission to move to CC2.0? I think we don't have to ask anonymous contributors, unless we're really anal about it. 196.200.85.103 09:21, 3 May 2005 (EDT)

Because you can't distribute a Wikivoyage article with a GFDL picture without handing out copies of the GFDL, or use a fair use image commercially. So that's why only public domain and CC1.0 images are allowed. 203.147.0.44 09:37, 3 May 2005 (EDT)

CC by-sa 1.0 and CC by-sa 2.0

I see that many people have silently started using CC2.0 images with good reason. As CC2.0 adoption becomes more widespread, it is getting increasingly difficult to get good CC1.0 images. Why don't we legalise whatever we are doing? My understanding of the whole mess is that there ought to be nothing stopping us from using CC2.0 images as long as they are properly credited as CC2.0 on the image page. We can't create a derivative work and release it as CC1.0, but that should be okay. What stops us from using both CC1.0 and CC2.0 images, while continuing to treat all text as CC1.0? --(WT-en) Ravikiran 12:34, 28 Nov 2005 (EST)

I have produced a Wikivoyage PDF file for all of Italy. What license would that be? What happens when someone start publishing Wikivoyage books on paper? --(WT-en) elgaard 15:56, 28 Nov 2005 (EST)

My interpretation is that the text is still CC1.0. I am assuming that low-res thumbnails of images are fair-use, so they don't need to be credited. If I am wrong, then printing and distributing an article is already in violation of the license terms even if we use CC1.0 only, because the thumbnails of the images don't credit the copyright holders. (Also see my discussion with Jpatokal above.) But if I am right, then the only thing we need to worry about is the high-resolution image page, where, if we are scrupulous about whether the particular image is CC1.0 or CC 2.0 and we take care not to move images from one license to another, we are clear. --(WT-en) Ravikiran 00:13, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

IMHO, the CC by-sa 2.0 is backwards compatible with the CC by-sa 2.0. By this I mean that the 1.0 version gives the user no more rights than the 2.0 version does. Likewise I believe that it's perfectly acceptable to use images which have been made available under the terms of any less restrictive license, like say the CC by license which requires only attribution, but not share-alike. We don't need an exact match on the license terms, but we need the license terms to be compatible.

For this reason it's clear that because the CC by-sa 1.0 is a more restrictive license than the CC by-sa 2.0, then there is no reason whatever not to use 2.0 images in a 1.0 guide. -- (WT-en) Mark 02:07, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Um -- if this is true, then what is stopping us from 'upgrading' all Wikivoyage to CC by-sa 2.0? See also [2]. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:22, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Let me see if I can do that in slightly clearer language. In fact the reason that you can use CC by-sa 2.0 images in a CC by-sa 1.0 work is that the 2.0 version imposes no restriction on re-use that the 1.0 version does not impose. Content owners rights are fully respected when their work is used in accordance with the additional restrictions (however tiny they might be) which are present in the 1.0 version of the license.

Admittedly the end user looses out slightly in this situation, in that they have permission to do things with the 2.0 licensed image (like combine the image into a GDFL work), permission which they do not have under the terms of the 1.0 license. The user also has additional rights which we are not telling them about when we use a public domain photo. Does that mean we shouldn't use public domain images? Likewise with my CC by license example, the user would actually have the right to do anything with the image, so long as they use attribution, but the important thing under the law is that should the user abide by the terms of the CC by-sa 1.0 they will be doing no wrong against the Copyright holder.

Of course I am not a lawyer, though I have read quite a bit of this law. If we want to be absolutely certain we should ask Larry. I'd be willing to bet a bottle of good Lavaux wine that I got it right. -- (WT-en) Mark 02:25, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

And this doesn't work in reverse, because we can't unilaterally decide to grant the additional 2.0 distribution rights for a work licensed only under 1.0. Sigh. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:55, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Precisely! It's too bad too. I guess what could be done is to advise contributors from now on that they are agreeing to release their work under the terms of the 2.0 version, but then continue to release the work as a whole under the 1.0 version, along with a statement saying that some Wikivoyage content is available from its authors under less restrictive terms such as the CC by-sa 2.0, the CC by, or public domain. This still wouldn't amount to an upgrade, which AFAICT would require getting a release from every single contributor. -- (WT-en) Mark 04:35, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Mark, I understand what you are saying and I hope you are right. But IANAL either. But even if we take the strict interpretation and say "CC2.0 images should be released only in CC2.0. I don't care about whether the other license is more restrictive or less", I think that we still have a way to do it. Why not incorporate that into policy? --(WT-en) Ravikiran 03:26, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

I'm not quite sure I understand. Do you think that CC by-sa 2.0 images should only be on CC by-sa pages? Again, there are multiple CC licenses, so we should be careful to distinguish. For instance the CC by license is IMO compatible with Wikivoyage, whereas the CC by-nc or CC by-nc-sa are not. -- (WT-en) Mark 04:35, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Let me try to be clearer.

1. I was talking only of CC-by-sa licenses, i.e. the one where commercial use is allowed by attribution.
2. As far as I understand, the two requirements of either license - 1.0 or 2.0 relevant to us are a) We should credit all those who contributed to the work and b) We should distribute the work under the same license, whether it is 1.0 or 2.0.
3. In the case of article text, both requirements are handled by the Mediawiki software.
4. But in case of image thumbnails on an article, the attribution of images is not handled - this is true even if we stick to 1.0. If we are worried about license compliance on article pages, then we could be already in violation. The moment someone takes a printout of an article page and distributes it, he has violated the license unless using thumbnails on article pages is fair use (probably because they are low-res reproductions or something.) See this discussion too.
5. But if we think that we are okay on that count, then it should be okay to have both cc1.0 and cc2.0 images as long as they are attributed and the license type is mentioned correctly on the image page.

So if we change our copyright policy to explicitly allow both cc-by-sa 1.0 and cc-by-sa 2.0, then we should be fine because all future versions of cc-by-sa are compatible with cc-by-sa 2.0. The only thing we can't do is take an image licensed under 1.0 and relicense it under 2.0 (or vice versa, if your interpretation is incorrect.) --(WT-en) Ravikiran 05:31, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

I think the main problem with having images licensed solely under by-sa 2.0 (not dual-licensed) is that it's not clear what the license is for the derived work made up of the image plus article text. Even after 15 or so years, no one is quite sure whether an image in an HTML page is part of the page (text + image = derived work) or just kind of next to the page (text + image = collective work).

So by using images with a different license from our text, our site gets on legally weird grounds, and we make it difficult for downstream publishers.

If we stick with the same plan we've had from the beginning -- all parts of the site are at least available under by-sa 1.0 -- we will have consistent and easy licensing, at the expense of perhaps not including some images or other items. I think that's a good tradeoff. --(WT-en) Evan 05:55, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

I do not think there is a real difference between pictures and thumbnails. Most pictures are about 600x400 pixels. That is about 2 inch X 1 inch on a decent printer. Maps are SVG, are we arguing that any bitmap representation is fair use?

I think we should change the wikivoyage copyleft to be the same as the commons.wikimedia.org copyleft: { {self2|GFDL|cc-by-sa-2.5,2.0,1.0}}. It would only work for new images and new articles, and for works where all authors wants to relicense. But it is a start. And we could benefit from coorporating more with the commons people. We alrady got some works from there, eg. locationmaps and castles. --(WT-en) elgaard 06:23, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

I guess what I'm saying is that my reading of versions 1 and 2 basically says that if you use a 2.0 licensed work in a 1.0 licensed work then you are doing precisely that: making everything available under at least the by-sa 1.0. This is because the 2.0 version adds no new restrictions on how the content be used, but instead grants addition freedoms to the end user. Therefore advising an end-user that a 2.0 image may be used under the terms of the 1.0 license in no way infringes on the rights of the copyright holder. This is the same is if we were to include images licensed under the CC by license, or images in the public domain for that matter.

Again, I would strongly suggest we ask Prof. Lessig or somebody else who can provide some guidance. Meanwhile I'll raise that bet to 2 bottles (St. Saphorin). -- (WT-en) Mark 06:27, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Oh, and if I am wrong, then I'm afraid I'm going to have to throw my support behind the idea that we should "upgrade" the license as soon as possible, regardless of how painful that might be. If it's true that 2.0 images cannot be redistributed under 1.0 then I feel we simply must do this change. -- (WT-en) Mark 07:15, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

I agree that we should ask CC. But I am not so optimistic. The CC2.5 says:

 You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under the terms of
 this License, a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License, or a Creative Commons iCommons   
 license that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Japan). You must include a copy
 of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License or other license specified in the previous sentence with every copy or 
 phonorecord

(WT-en) elgaard 08:59, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

First, I'm not sure I understand your point about thumbnails and pictures. Unpack that for me, please.

I meant that we should credit all images, thumbnails or not. The Wikimedia software manipulate images in all sort of ways. There is no point in trying to define what is a real image and what is just a fair use thumbnail when we can credit everything. Especially because printouts/PDF's images might have a heigher resolution than my monitor. Jpatokal says that it is the printers responsobilty to do credits correct. But I would like the printer to also be us, that we produce finished PDF's or software that produce PDF's. Users that print off a destinations should also get correct attributions --(WT-en) elgaard 11:31, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

My understanding of Wikimedia Commons's goals is to provide images and other media for the multitude of Wikimedia sites. So, a hodgepodge of licenses makes a lot of sense, there. That's not our goal, though -- so I think that our existing policy of having all work on the site be at least available under the by-sa 1.0 is sound. It makes it easy for others to use and re-use the work created here, which is what we're trying to do. Your example of the PDF and print books is a strong one.

We should keep everything under at least CC-1.0. If we also require new contributions to be CC-2.x, it will be easyer to upgrade if we want to and I doubt that anyone would release their contribution as CC-1.0 but not CC-2. Allowing contributions to be marked as GFDL would allow Wikipedia to use some of our material. On my user page I say that all my pictures are also GFDL, but I still get requests to release them as GFDL. OTOH I then upload them to commons.wikimedia.org because there is no 100KByte limit. --(WT-en) elgaard 11:47, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

I'm almost sure you're correct, though: the 2.x ShareAlike licenses are not downward compatible. You can't take 2.x-licensed works, mix them up with 1.0-licensed works, and come out with a 1.0 licensed work. Actually, as far as I can tell, you can't mix them up at all. --(WT-en) Evan 09:22, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

Having read Mia Garlick's thread on Ghettoisation of the CC I'm starting to fear that we may in fact only be able to use one version of the license at a time. To my mind this runs pretty seriously counter to at least the spirit of the by-sa. I've at least once talked somebody into clicking the "CC by-sa" button on Flickr specifically so that her work could be used here... to find out that maybe it can't because of a "this and only this" license clause is frustrating at least, almost depressing. If anybody took my bet, sorry, I'm drinking the wine. Now. -- (WT-en) Mark 11:37, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

I haven't read that thread (and cannot find it). But we had this Wikivoyage_talk:Dual_licensing discussion. "the this and only this" clause cannot prevent the author from releasing a work under multiple licenses. --(WT-en) elgaard 12:29, 29 Nov 2005 (EST)

See also Wikivoyage_talk:Copyleft#Upgrading and Wikivoyage_talk:Copyleft#GFDL_and_Creative_Commons. (WT-en) Pashley 00:48, 6 January 2008 (EST)

Using images from commons.wikimedia.org

Swept in from the Pub:

Can we refer to images held at commons.wikimedia.org (like you can from wikipedia)? This would save manually transferring all the images of cities from commons.wikimedia.org to wikivoyage.org which is very tedious!!! Refering to wikimedia doesn't seem to work in wikivoyage at the moment, although it does work in all languages of wikipedia.

I have copied across a few images already:

Image:StJohnsCambNewCourt.jpg, Image:Cam_colls_from_johns.jpg and Image:Hoan_kiem_hanoi_1999.jpg

I've also noticed that I'm not the only person who has been forced to manually transfer images across from wikimedia:

http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Image:Florence_italy_duomo.jpg

(WT-en) Rnt20 10:03, 19 May 2005 (EDT)

Wikivoyage is not a Wikimedia project and it does not use the GFDL license, so Commons images are generally not acceptable here (unless PD or CC-by-SA 1.0) and the Wikimedia foundation is unlikely to look kindly on deep links from us. Fortunately the images you uploaded are PD, so they're OK. (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:31, 19 May 2005 (EDT)

Transferring the images is not that bad. Especially if you use konqueror where you can upload an URL from a third site, ie, you do not have to download the images to your own computer first. -- (WT-en) elgaard 12:59, 19 May 2005 (EDT)

I still worry about that WikiTravel isn't a Wikimedia project. Wouldn't it be fine to get in the family? I'm not up to date with copyright issues but I'm looking forward to integration. As long as this doesn't happen: Shouldn't we start our own commons? It's stupid to waste storage by uploading the same image to different languages. de:Benutzer:(WT-de) Thkoch2001

If storage is a problem, then note that commons.wikipedia.org does not have 100KB limit, in fact they want images in full/origial size. --(WT-en) elgaard 17:07, 3 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Bump. I'd just like to raise this issue once again — it's an increasingly big pain in the neck that there's no way to share images across versions. Would it be possible to come to an agreement with the Wikimedia folks to allow us to use their commons? And if you want to get real fancy you could maybe even add some magical scripting to check that any image linked in from there has to be PD or CC-by-sa 1.0 compliant... (WT-en) Jpatokal 14:58, 22 Oct 2005 (EDT)

It's probably worth noting that we now have a Shared Repository. --(WT-en) Evan 09:30, 9 March 2006 (EST)

Image upload page

The current "upload file" page has a couple problems:

1. It tells you to check the box affirming that you have the right to upload the file... but there is no such box.
2. It provides no guidance or instruction for how to actually license the files you upload. To anyone who hasn't gone to law school, saying "I made this" and uploading it would seem like enough. And anyone who's legally conscious enough to know that all contributions have to be CC-BY-SA would probably figure that it goes without saying. But neither of these assumptions is the case, and the text on the page does nothing to explain otherwise or tell uploaders what the project needs them to say.

We could probably save a lot of time spent nagging people about this by automating some of the necessary boilerplate. For example, checkboxes to "license this file under CC-BY-SA" or "release this file to the public domain" could automatically dump the appropriate verbiage into the description. (And if neither of them is checked, don't upload the file.) A non-imaginary checkbox confirming that either "I own this" or "I have permission to upload this" (and again: no check, no upload) would probably help cut down on the copyvios. And optional fields to specify copyright date and licensor - also dumped into the image description - would be nice touches (I think). - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 15:35, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

Me too(tm) for all of the above. I like Wikipedia's style of having a pull-down box to choose your license. Also, the upload page should include very, very clear links to Shared so people uploa d stuff in there instead — if anything Shared should be the default place to put stuff. (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:10, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

Agreed on all counts. What must be done to make it so? -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 22:29, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

When I placed the Cleveland image up on VFD I was going to place something here to effect of this conversation, instead I went to sleep and left this page alone. I agree with everything stated above. I was being a little too hostile toward the image, but I think if we did have a couple of check boxes prevent issues like this one from happening again. (WT-en) Sapphire 10:11, 5 April 2006 (EDT)

I believe that MediaWiki 1.6 has some tools for doing this stuff (see WikiPedia:Special:Upload for an example). Since 1.6.0 was just released, I'll try to get it working. I'd note that only a few licenses (by-sa 1.0, public domain, possibly cc-by 1.0, 2.0, 2.5) are acceptable for Wikivoyage, so I think we'd have to yank most of the stuff on there. --(WT-en) Evan 12:21, 5 April 2006 (EDT)

I've got another issue that is related to the above mentioned problem. We have a great new user named (WT-en) Shalom Alechem. Alechem has been working hard on Krakow and recently uploaded this image created by himself (I'm assuming) Image:Cmentarz_Rakowicki_1.jpg, unfortunately, he has so far only released this image under GFDL. He has uploaded this image[3]. When he uploaded to Wikivoyage he made no mention of any license i.e. GFDL or CC-BY-SA.

If we can change the upload special pages, it would be great for wikivoyage and for users. (WT-en) Sapphire 14:58, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

The new upload page seems to be helping, but it still lets the contributor leave the license as "None specified", which leaves us with an image that's technically unlicensed. And since it's the default, that's what most newbies taking the path of least resistance will leave it as. "None specified" isn't part of MediaWiki:Licenses, so it can't be taken out by editing that list. Is there any practical way to take it out of the pulldown altogether, or to stop any upload with that value with an informative page that sends the contributor back to pick a licence? (I'd also prefer to take "Don't know" out of the list, because that's not a valid licence either.) - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 11:45, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

I'd also like to add a "Source" input box, where people can either check "created by self" or enter the URL they grabbed it from. This would also make tracking copyvios much easier. See also the "Author" suggestion below. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:13, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

Second the idea. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 00:35, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

That would be great. Then if they don't ACTIVELY click the box, we KNOW we must bug them about where it's from! -- (WT-en) Colin 00:44, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

We do have the disclaimer "Please note that all contributions to Wikivoyage are considered to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 (see Project:Copyleft for details)." So technically speaking, all images are at the very least CC-BY-SA if they are uploaded. The Don't know template should probably reflect this. However, I do have an issue with this fact, because I fear some of the new users are just uploading copyvios. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 00:35, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

That's a good thing. If the selection box defaults to cc-bysa, we won't be able to tell the difference between a correctly-licensed work and a "user didn't think" upload which we need to bug the user about. -- (WT-en) Colin 00:44, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

Were you referring to my observation? Currently, the selection box defaults to "None selected," as TVerBeek noted. However, the CC-BY-SA disclaimer is directly under the edit box anytime anyone edits an article, curiously, the disclaimer isn't on the upload page. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 01:02, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

Tag for attribution

We need a machine-readable tag that can be used to identify the author of a picture, which is often not the same as the uploader. Could I suggest {{author|John Smith}}?

Ideally this, the source URL and the location the picture was taken could be entered in the upload page. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:45, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

Public images licensing

People, through a quick talk with (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire), I came to notice that there's no licensing option availabe when uploading images issued by governments other than the US's. What should a user do when uploading a graphic or picture from such a source (which are most certainly considered public domain, at least here in Brazil)? Any ideas? Cheers! (WT-en) Mateus Alves

If it really is public domain, then tag it as public domain. Be careful though: the US's policy of placing everything in the public domain is very much an exception, and eg. anything by the Singapore government is copyrighted. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:45, 27 May 2006 (EDT)

I think that's a Commonwealth thing; most former British colonies have copyright on government works. However, Mateus, could you find some English-language links that say that Brazilian government works are in the public domain? --(WT-en) Evan 00:01, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

OK, so, here's Brazil's copyright law in English, which doesn't at first glance have an exception for government works in the same way US law does. --(WT-en) Evan 00:06, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

I know that Indian government works are not PD - the government owns copyright (They took "crown copyright" and did a copy-paste job.) — (WT-en) Ravikiran 03:49, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

Be careful regarding images from United States government sources as well. Text and images produced by state or local governments are fully protected by United States copyright law. Only works by the federal government are put into the public domain, and even then there are exceptions. Further, products of civilian agencies and outside contractors on behalf of the federal government may be fully protected by copyright law. In short, if an image is not specifically identified as public domain, it probably isn't. (WT-en) SHC 06:40, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

I'll look deeper into that matter as soon as I can, since legalese isn't my strong point ;) But I'll ask some lawyer friends about that... I might be wrong in this supposition, but I'm pretty sure pictures produced toward distribution and promotion (of touristic and cultural destinations, in our case) CAN be used freely. (WT-en) Mattalves 11:33, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

Turns out that yes, every information the government puts out is available as public domain, unless considered "classified" by decreet, law or executive instances (such as armed forces information). Article number 37 of the Brazilian constitution declares that "the direct or indirect public administration of any of the powers of the Union, the States, the Federal District and the municipalities, as well as their foundations, shall obey the principles of lawfulness, impersonality, morality, publicity", which pretty much guarantees the right of every citizen to publicize governmental produced info (pictures included). English version of the aforementioned article can be found here. (WT-en) Mattalves 19:33, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

Confusing Image copyright - help!

Can someone go over this and tell me if it is public domain or GFDL? — (WT-en) Ravikiran 15:37, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

According to this [4] the image is in the public domain, however, the edited version I think is both PD and GFDL or may only be GFDL. I believe it would be best to use the original image [5] that was uploaded. Also, we may want to double check with the user (de:Wikipedia:Benutzer:Vlado) who donated the image to the Wikimedia Foundation. -- Sapphire

Something cannot be both public domain and GFDL. "Public domain" means "I give up any claim of exclusive rights to this, and anybody can do absolutely anything they want with it," which means that all of the restrictions of the GFDL (or any other license, including CC-BY-SA) would be invalid. What the licence tag on that image is trying to say is that the image itself is PD, but the collection it comes from is supposedly copyrighted, so if you were to try to use the whole set, they'd take you to court. I'm not familiar enough with copyright law to know if that kind of claim is valid, but it doesn't matter: everything after "The work of art depicted in this image and the reproduction thereof are in the public domain worldwide," is irrelevant to us. Since it's PD, we aren't even legally required to say where we got it (except of course that we should, to document the fact that it's PD). - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 18:40, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

Thanks. That was my interpretation too. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 03:13, 24 July 2006 (EDT)

Movies

Sweep in discussion from the Pub:

guys , english is not my mother tonguage , i just want to search for movies about different countries before i travel to it..movies speaking about natural places maybe animals..anythng interesting about the country i m heading to? i just want to know what is the name of that kind of movies , is it documantry?i always search documantry movies but it just speak about history of the country.. and just a suggestion can we add a topic for every place or city with movies made by us..i mean most of the travellers do some photoing and make small movies while they are travelling , can we add a section of ( movies ) to every country so every one can upload his own movie about it  ?

A movie like that is sometimes called a "travelogue" or "travelog". Putting movies on Wikivoyage would introduce some major technical difficulties, including questions about what formats (QuickTime, Windows Media, etc?), and the amount of bandwidth they would take to download. And that doesn't fit well with Wikivoyage's goal of producing a guide that can be printed. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 00:22, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

This would be more in line with what World66 is doing... (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:14, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

I don't think he or she's suggesting putting movies on Wikivoyage, just asking how to find them. If we know of a good movie or book specific to an area, it is worth pointing out in the article. e.g I linked to one of each in Nurestan and Macau#Read suggests a book on the history. It is not entirely clear in Project:External_links that such links are OK. I'd say it should be. (WT-en) Pashley 02:08, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

I think he was asking to create a section for uploading videos because of this quote: "so every one can upload his own movie." The 'where you can stick it' page is good with directing people on where to put a good book about a destination/topic (In the Understand section) and I believe a good film should go there too. I'm not particularlly fond of the idea of linking to another website for information on books or websites. I think it should be sufficient enough to give the title and the author/director and let the user go to the nearest book/video store. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 03:45, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

If you're recommending a movie or a book generally available to bookstores (i.e. not a self-published tourism-agency publication), simply typing "(ISBN 1891830600)" will autolink to B&N, Amazon, and a couple sites that do online scans for the best price. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 08:29, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

i was suggesting uploading movies to wikivoyage .i think wiki travel is good source for travel in there journy , but simple question what make u do ur journy?i mean what make u to go to sudan and not to korea?simply it will depend on some information u gather or a movie u see , maybe a book , maybe some of ur friends tell u something or alot of other resurses..why not try to make wikivoyage help us not just while the journy but also before the journy!help us in choosing our destenations..if a traveller made a movie(nice )one ,about certain place , and then he uploaded to the other travelers to have an idea about that place , i think that will help alot!

the next step is about the practical problems , like the format of the movies and teh extra bandwdith needed , well i think that can be solve.for the format i think we can leave it free for anyone to do what he want..maybe he has low internet connection so he will upload low quailty movie , maybe other has higher band , and can do better.. teh next problem of the extra band , i don't know but i can think of 2 solutions, maybe we can depend on the torrent tecnology so the role of the server in wiki will just act as manger of teh process and no need for large extra band , or we can just depend on other torrent sites which can do that and just link to it..

in either cases i think the practical problems must not stop us..for example take a look at legeltorrent.com , u will see a nice movie about sibria in russia!

Linking image to another webpage

Hello, I have a question and I don't know where to ask. Can I put a link to an image which is in another webpage? I mean, do not upload the image to the wiki, but put a link to that image where it is hosted. I am not sure if this is allowed. Thanks 08:57, 25 August 2006 (EDT)

I don't think that is allowed. Why would you want to do that? — (WT-en) Ravikiran 09:59, 25 August 2006 (EDT)

Check out this section of the External Links policy. Under most circumstances, such a link would be discouraged, and the policy explicitly says "don't do it for images on a personal image gallery". If you can explain your intentions a little more explicitly, we can maybe help determine whether they constitute an exception. (Either way, thanks for asking before doing it, and please sign your inquiry so we know who we're talking to.) -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 10:08, 25 August 2006 (EDT)

No, this isn't possible. If images are included in a Wikivoyage guide, it's best to have them in the Wikivoyage database. That way, other users can update them. --(WT-en) Evan 00:48, 26 August 2006 (EDT)

People removal

So, I thought this article on How to remove tourists from your photos might be interesting for other Wikivoyagers. --(WT-en) Evan 22:53, 5 December 2006 (EST)

Unfortunately the advice given, while spiffy, is not applicable unless you're already sufficiently into photography to lug around tripods. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:00, 6 December 2006 (EST)

Images of hotels/restaurants/ect

We don't seem to have anything format in the Image Policy, but I've always thought that it's best to avoid images of hotels, stores, restaurants, etc, unless they are landmarks of some sort. In Szentendre there's a kinda arty shot of a table at a restaurant. Keeping with our minimal images guideline, I wonder if that's the best use of images. I'd like to formalize this in the Image policy. (WT-en) Maj 16:24, 27 January 2007 (EST)

This question was probably triggered by my last edit for Szentendre adding 'see photo' to the following phrase:

Gulyas soup is what the restaurant is most famous for, and it's served in a funky manner (see photo)

which resulted from my discussion with Jpatokal in Talk:Szentendre#Rab Ráby--and gives some reasons for the phrase. BTW, this photo existed in the very first version of the artice, written by Jpatokal. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 01:03, 28 January 2007 (EST)

Rab Raby is probably the best known restaurant in Szentendre, but this is not saying very much. I won't shed any tears if it's removed, but I don't think it's doing much harm either. (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:40, 28 January 2007 (EST)

As for policy side, I think that providing illustrations to specials like "served in a funky manner" is definitely helpful for a traveller choosing a preferred place to eat during his trip. For this reason, I would vote for keeping in Szentendre the image of gulyas in Rub Raby. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 15:08, 28 January 2007 (EST)

Yeah, but that line of reasoning would also suggest photos of hotel rooms, which I'd strongly disagree with... I think the images should really be representative of the whole destination, not just a single establishment. This example might not be a big deal, but it's a Project:Slippery slope in my book. (WT-en) Maj 21:26, 28 January 2007 (EST)

Why not just put EVERYTHING on Shared?

Why can't ALL images and maps, etc go on shared, to make things simpler? If the link for "upload file"in the toolbox on En went straight to shared it would solve having to worry about moving images there later, and having to tell every new user (often repeatedly) to upload there instead. What are the only exceptions as of now, maps? I say let them go on shared too, even though they're language specific... life would be easier, and help the other language versions to acquire images faster. At times I want to put one on another language version, but when I see that I would have to move it to Shared first I say forget it – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:41, 14 March 2007 (EDT)

Sounds like a good idea to me. The language-specific images are the minority, and it doesn't seem like it would hurt in any way to have language-specific files on shared. In the case of SVG maps it would actually be beneficial since those files would be more visible across language versions and are easy to translate. -- (WT-en) Ryan 03:02, 14 March 2007 (EDT)

Very good idea. Even maps does not have to be language specific, for the German versions of the South African maps I created new svg files, so that they can take them directly to the German wiki, but that is unnecessary as the German annotation could just have been a new layer in the existing svg file. The only potential obstacle I see is that users require another userid on shared. --(WT-en) NJR_ZA 04:08, 14 March 2007 (EDT)

True, but it's already a policy that non-specific images should go there anyway, so it's already a pain in the ass with the 2nd user id thingy... except right now it's more of a pain in the ass since people can so easily ignore it and just upload to English :) – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 22:29, 14 March 2007 (EDT)

I've been writing to recently started Finnish Wikivoyage, but there's this problem, that I'd like to use pictures from English Wikivoyage, but they've been uploaded to English version instead of shared. What are my possibilities and rights for moving these to shared? And even if possible should it be done at all? -- (WT-en) Trsqr 05:51, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

Use any photos that are CC-by-SA or PD licenced, move them to shared as you require. --(WT-en) NJR_ZA 07:12, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

Where are we on this anyway, is this possible and desirable to everyone? I still think it's a good idea... – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 21:44, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

The only reason I can see for not doing this is the user-accounts issue. I don't remember anymore exactly how an account on one wiki works on another (something with OpenID, right?) and I didn't find any obvious explanation of it on Shared to remind me... but I know it requires a wee bit of setup and logging in a second time even after it's set up, which is bound to confuse people. But from a policy standpoint, deprecating all language-specific image repositories in favor of Shared, and sending all new upload attempts to Shared instead, makes all kinds of sense. Heck, if it could be done without too much rending of garments, gnashing of teeth, and disambiguation of filename collisions, I'd support merging them all into Shared. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 22:32, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. I've figured out a way that all Wikivoyage language versions can share the same user database, so you don't have to use OpenID or anything, so that you could just go back and forth to shared without ever getting logged out. It should be pretty awesome, but it's going to require merging our user databases into one (and figuring out what to do with conflicts). --(WT-en) Evan 10:52, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Wow, that sounds amazing... that would really make life simpler.... – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 02:04, 4 May 2007 (EDT)

Why two different English language image policies?

Any reason not to merge Project:Image policy into Shared:Image policy then redirect the former to the latter? ~ 203.189.134.3 08:30, 10 October 2007 (EDT)

allow embedded(?) video to illustrate travel topic

I would like to embed (or add a link to) a video which illustrates the Canyoning travel activity. The article on it is very far from complete, but I have another reason for giving it a priority.

I had several attempts to explain to my friends in person what canyoning is: I showed many pictures, I explained basic techniques that together make up canyoning--but every time I faced little understanding until I showed one or two videos demonstrating the activity.

If I manage to find a video complaint to our license, is it possible to have it placed in travel topic at Wikivoyage?

We have "web-only" markup now, and, more importantly, people typically choose activities for their trip before they go (i.e. they have Internet connection), not after arriving to their destination where they only have a printed guide. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:38, 8 November 2007 (EST)

Images automatically licensed as cc-by-sa-1.0?

copied from en:Project talk:Votes for deletion

...continued from Image:Asia 2006 156.jpg

Guidelines? What guidelines? But as far as I know, no periods of time are mentioned anywhere, and going through the {{dont know}} tag stage seems to be optional. I've been adding {{vfd}} tags to images that already have {{dont know}} tags, and adding {{dont know}} tags to images with no licence. ~ 203.144.143.4 18:21, 31 January 2008 (EST)

No reason - but then my conclusion that the incorrectly licensed images should be deleted doesn't seem to be universally acceptable. Not sure if there is some plan afoot to somehow legitimize the 'no license' images as well. --(WT-en) Wandering 18:29, 31 January 2008 (EST)

It doesn't matter that it's not universally accepted. All that matters is that after 5 weeks of debate they have not, by any stretch of the imagination, been "proven innocent". ~ 203.144.143.4 18:54, 31 January 2008 (EST)

Since you seem to be flitting around more than everyone else, do you get a sense that there are huge numbers of images that are licensed by cc-by-sa other than 1.0? There seem to be three or four listed in this page which is not a huge amount (I assume, no one wants the unlicensed ones) and I'm wondering why we have this panic (we are headed for disaster) thing going on. I get the feeling that there's a subtext here that I'm missing and wonder if you have an insight into this. (Insights from other admins seem to be in short supply.) --(WT-en) Wandering 22:28, 31 January 2008 (EST)

Could be that most of us are feeling the same way, what are we missing?. I for one don't see any huge issue here, we have always removed invalidly licensed material as we come across them and as far as I can see we have been doing a good job. If this vfd page contains all (or most) of the invalid licensed material in wikivoyage then we have been keeping it quite clean. I can't see any reason for doom and gloom and a sudden rush to clean all up at once, but since Tweak (If I may use the name (WT-en) Sapphire assigned to 203.144.143.4) feels the need to list all now, I'm happy to work through them as usual. Even if all these are deleted, the impack on WT as a whole is minimal. --(WT-en) Nick 02:34, 1 February 2008 (EST)

Relatively speaking, no, there aren't that many with incompatible licences. I'm going to VFD them all now: #CC-by-SA-2.0 (13 images), #CC-by-SA-2.5 (67 images), #CC-by-SA-3.0 (2 images). ~ 203.144.143.4 04:37, 1 February 2008 (EST)

To put that in perspective, 8,349 files have been uploaded (Feb.1st 2008). Also bear in mind that of those 82 images, some are not linked to from anywhere, some are only linked to from Talk pages or "joke" articles, some are only linked to from User pages (presumably it's not unreasonable to expect that they be re-licenced), and some are copyvios; and some are just really bad photos. Of the rest, many have been uploaded by their creators and it would be simple enough for the uploader/creator to re-licence them. ~ 203.144.143.4 07:11, 1 February 2008 (EST)

Well, let's try to put some closure to this. It seems to me that there is some sort of consensus that we should delete the improperly licensed pictures. To summarize the discussion above: (WT-en) Jpatokal wanted to keep the pictures but only because there was no consensus. So, let's set (WT-en) Jpatokal aside for now and see if we have a consensus. 203.144.143.6, 61.7.183.208, (WT-en) Wandering, (WT-en) Nick, 203.144.143.4 (assuming .4 and .6 are different) feel that these images should be deleted if we've done our bit in trying to correct the license. User 65.24.110.210 feels we should keep them if the licensing requirements are met and delete them otherwise. I think it is quite clear that higher licenses don't satisfy our requirements because only (WT-en) Peter has argued to keep them and even his options require a change in our licensing system which implies that these pictures do not match our current licensing requirements. I'd say there is a consensus to delete improperly licensed pictures (pictures with licenses other than cc-by-sa-1.0). Agreed? --(WT-en) Wandering 13:45, 1 February 2008 (EST)

You misrepresent my arguments above, presumably because you did not understand them. I argued that we clarify the text of our copyleft to match our day-by-day practices, not to change our site's licensing, which is a different issue altogether. You are conflating discussions and have not understood the issues at hand here. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:39, 6 February 2008 (EST)

I also assume no one will argue that we should keep unlicensed ones. I notice that some of the pictures posted without a license are copyrighted elsewhere and due diligence says we should remove unlicensed ones post haste. Agreed? --(WT-en) Wandering 13:45, 1 February 2008 (EST)

No, not agreed on any of that. First, it's not an issue of "improperly licensed" images, it's an issue of whether some correctly licensed images can be used on Wikivoyage. Second, there is no such thing as an "unlicensed" image, there are only CC by-sa 1.0 images without explicit tags. (Everything I uploaded before we even invented license tags, for example.) Third, the proper place or venue for this policy discussion is not VFDs, but the Talk page, where eg. Cacahuate has also expressed his support for keeping CC >1.0 images. (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:01, 3 February 2008 (EST)

Could someone put a link from the Viking discussion above to this section so that everyone knows we're reaching a consensus? Thanks! Trust a picture about Vikings in a Storm to cause a storm! --(WT-en) Wandering 13:45, 1 February 2008 (EST)

Regarding Wanderings suggestion that we delete all unlicensed images:Old farts like me may pop up again, knowing NOTHING about wikiways, but willing to contribute comments on a lifetime of travel as well as a few photos'. Those of us in the old farts club as well as others may not have a clue about licenses. So, if you do mark one "Dont know", give it 30 days for the contributor to figure it out before a deletion. As far as other ill licensed photos, I think it best to get rid of them and clean up the project. Jani contibutes some of the best images on the site, and is one of the more wikiways informed. For some reason, a number of his photos have no license nor have had a license. I would not want to loose any of them. Maybe he could comment on why he does that. (the new one on the front page is about as good as we get, but has no license????????) (WT-en) 2old 11:11, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Makes sense to me (the 30 days part). Perhaps, at least for recently added pictures, we could drop a note in the users mailbox (a template would serve for this) letting them know that the image will be deleted in 30 days if cc-by-sa-1.0 is not selected. --(WT-en) Wandering 12:01, 2 February 2008 (EST)

OK, I'm starting to get pissed off here. Here's what it says and has said on Special:Upload for as long as I remember:

All uploaded images are automatically licensed under CC-by-SA 1.0.

Comprende? All uploaded images are automatically licensed under CC-by-sa 1.0. There is no such thing as a "Don't know" image, there are only untagged CC by-sa 1.0 images, and all these VFDs are null and void. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:53, 3 February 2008 (EST)

(WT-en) Jpatokal, I'm sorry to hear that you're starting to get pissed off (though, I must admit, it is not at all clear to me why a fair discussion should make you angry). Anyway, the point is that wikivoyage has an obligation to its contributers (as well as to downstream users of content) to take at least minimal steps in ensuring that images are not copyrighted elsewhere and that their use under a common cause commercial license is fair. If a user does not select a license, wikivoyage should not blithely assume that it can be made available under a common cause license. If we accept your argument, then nothing in wikivoyage should ever be deleted (all those copyvio deletions of text, etc.) because, again by your definition, everything contributed to wikivoyage is automatically cc-by-sa-1.0. I could add the text of an entire book, upload songs perhaps, copy pictures freely from the internet, and you would assume that all this is kosher because we say that everything is cc-by-sa-1.0 by definition. That, I should think, is not a very responsible way of treating this enterprise. BTW, thanks for the tip on User:(WT-en) Cacahuate's contribution in the talk page. I'll take a look at it and add his views into this summary. I've also reduced the size of the quote above, it detracts from the discussion (makes this part look like a separate section). --(WT-en) Wandering 11:01, 4 February 2008 (EST)

That's not at all what I'm saying. If any image is a copyright violation, then it's a copyright violation regardless of what tag is placed on it, and can and should be dealt with as such.

So one more time. When any user uploads an image, they certify that it is available under the Creative Commons license. If there is reason to believe that this declaration is not true, whether out of malice, ignorance or stupidity, then the image should be deleted. However, for images like Image:IMG_0156.JPGs and Image:DSCF0039.JPG that have been VFD'd above, there's absolutely no reason to believe that these personal snapshots are not the work of the uploader.

You'll note that this is exactly the same thing as we do for text. Contributions are assumed to be legit by default, but we keep a close eye on dubious additions are promptly nuked. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:40, 4 February 2008 (EST)

If in fact (and I have no reason to question) Jani is correct that uploaded images are automatically licensed under CC-by-sa 1.0, then when contribtors upload images, the images should be automatically tagged CC-by-sa 1.0. In my non-wiki life I have to deal with lawyers on a reular basis. They have advised me numerous times, not to create arguable situations. (WT-en) Jpatokal as a community leader needs to have a bit more patience with this sort of situation and act as a counsel in these matters and others. If he is actually getting pissed off, anger management classes may be in the future. Remember, creative people are always the first to go crazy. If we can not automatically tag untagged photos, then I support the idea to tag them Dont know, advise the contributor, wait 30 days and then delete. I think the tagging should be a voluntary action of the contributor, that would eliminate the arguable element from the situation/transaction.

You are welcome to suggest we change policy so that, in the future, images uploaded without an explicit license specified are deleted. I would even support you, as long as there's an easy way for that license to be specified while uploading, and all existing untagged images are tagged first. However, retroactively deleting thousands of images when they already have perfectly valid licenses is beyond senseless. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:40, 4 February 2008 (EST)

Did you have an idea how to tag all existing untagged images are tagged first ? And, at this point I am still thinking Delete. Reason: I do not think an arbitrary license is valid. ( Guess it depends on where also.) (WT-en) 2old 12:06, 4 February 2008 (EST)

Easy-peasy: give me a list of untagged articles, and I'll run a script to tag them all.

And can you please explain to me what is unclear or arbitrary about All uploaded images are automatically licensed under CC-by-SA 1.0? Why is this any more unclear or arbitrary than All contributions to Wikivoyage must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0, which is what we require for text contributions? (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:46, 4 February 2008 (EST)

The text is clear, but when one finds an image unmarked for license as in Image:PLO FlagShop.JPG , one of my favorites, I would think it better if it was licensed rather than guessing. For me it would be a perfect POM, but may have been avoided due to license fears/questions. On wikivoyage shared, it is common practice to mark unlicensed images VFD and for them to be deleted, (I have even been notified as such) so I thought the same applied here. Above you said "list of untagged articles" did you mean photos?. The dont know tag states Wikivoyage cannot keep images without a statement that licenses them under terms permitting us to use them. That is in conflict with your side of the debate here, that All uploaded images are automatically licensed under CC-by-SA 1.0. My personal preference would be that I could contribute images to wikivoyage, that could not be used by others, but that seems impossible. When it comes to photos, I really do not consider owning anything. It is simply something I have seen and I am sharing the view with others. That simple. Others may want to control the use, but in reality it is so difficult that even the thought is not worth while. So I guess one of my questions is, why even tag the Dont knows and why have they been deleted in the past under the same circumstances? (WT-en) 2old 14:01, 4 February 2008 (EST)

Wikivoyage Shared has different wording in the upload box plus a license selector that forces the user to explicitly choose a license, and there was a fairly lengthy argument there as well about what to do with untagged images.

However, here on en:, the upload wording is unambiguous and there's no requirement for users to place a license tag nor are there any instructions for doing so. The "don't know" tag is a fairly recent invention and, based on a quick Google of the archives, it has never been used as a reason for VFD until Tweak came along.

So. I'm going to propose that we do the following:

• All old untagged images are tagged CC by-sa 1.0 and removed from VFD (unless there are other reasons to suspect they're copyvio etc).
• Special:Upload is modified to have the same license pulldown as Shared.
• After these changes are done, any new untagged images will be tagged with "don't know" and listed for VFD.

All in favor? (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:12, 4 February 2008 (EST)

(WT-en) Jpatokal, I'm sorry, but the discussion above is completely at odds with your proposal. There is a lot of discussion above and it may be hard for you to read through everything so let me make it simple. The following users feel, and they have all made substantive arguments in favor, that images that are unlicensed or incorrectly licensed (cc-by-sa>1.0) should be deleted: 203.144.143.6, 61.7.183.208, (WT-en) Wandering, (WT-en) Nick, 203.144.143.4, and (WT-en) 2old. The users who want to keep the images are (WT-en) Jpatokal (though initially you did not express that view) and (WT-en) Peter. (User:(WT-en) Cacahuate's reasons for keeping are related to the need for a consensus and I assume he hasn't seen this discussion so I won't include him in the keep column.) Of the two in favor of keeping, (WT-en) Peter's view seems to be that the images are not properly licensed but should be kept for expedient reasons. You, (WT-en) Jpatokal, are the only user who feels that we have no responsibility towards our users in the matter of licensing.

Again, you completely misrepresent my above arguments, again presumably because you don't understand them (much less the issues being discussed). I do not think that >1.0 attribution-sharealike images are not properly licensed, that doesn't make sense to begin with, because all one needs to do to properly license a file as CC-by-SA is to indicate their intent to do so. Besides, that discussion has nothing to do with this one (again, because you don't understand the issues we are discussing, you have conflated several distinct discussions underway). This is a discussion merely of whether saving a file on a page where it says that you agree to certain terms by saving the file, actually does mean that the person agrees to those terms. It seems evident beyond reasonable objection that this is the case. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:39, 6 February 2008 (EST)

I find that comment genuinely offensive, and I expect an immediate apology. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:27, 5 February 2008 (EST)

I'm sorry (WT-en) Jpatokal, but no apology is forthcoming. --(WT-en) Wandering 14:20, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Now I understand that you are a community leader but I hope you will see that the community is better served by discussing things (without shouting - I noticed that you, without comment, restored the big lettering in the quote above - and without aggression) and by being accepting of a viewpoint that may be at odds with your own. The success of wikivoyage should be of more importance to you than the presence or non-presence of a few (or many) images that have been loaded onto wikivoyage without a license and that wikivoyage is then redistributing under a free common cause license. In case after case the courts have ruled that websites cannot hide behind 'we don't know' when it comes to copyright infringement and I ask you to consider how it will look when a downstream user, Project:Wikivoyage Press is a good example, is sued for publishing copyright pictures and then Project:Wikivoyage Press sues wikivoyage for claiming that the picture was available under a free license and then wikivoyage says "hey, we don't ask our users to choose a license we just assign them, sometimes years after the fact!" Project:Wikivoyage Press will be fine but where will wikivoyage be? I, for one, believe that I have a responsibility to wikivoyage because my intellectual contributions are embodied in it. And, if you stopped shouting, getting angry, and being generally dismissive of other viewpoints, I hope you'll see it that way too. --(WT-en) Wandering 11:27, 5 February 2008 (EST)

The reason you think I'm "dismissive" of your arguments is that I find them completely and totally irrational, your renderings of other peoples' comments are tendentious at best, and you're conflating two completely separate issues (untagged and CC >1.0) to boot. But let me try asking you two questions.

(WT-en) Jpatokal, you can hold whatever opinion you like about the rationality of my arguments just like I can hold whatever opinions I like about the rationality of your arguments. However, neither of us own wikivoyage, we are both contributers to this site, and it is NOT conducive to a meaningful discussion to shout, to show aggression, and be dismissive. I'm sorry you can't see that.--(WT-en) Wandering 14:20, 5 February 2008 (EST)

A) Are you satisfied with text contributions licensed by users hitting the "Save page" button below the text "All contributions to Wikivoyage must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0"? (yes/no)

B) Are you satisfied with image contributions licensed by users hitting the "Upload file" button below the text "All uploaded images are automatically licensed under CC-by-SA 1.0"? (yes/no)

Do what you want down the road. I feel that the user should ALWAYS explicitly select a license or, at the least, agree that the work is free of copyright and that he/she agrees to release it under a clearly specified common cause license (with one of those agree/disagree check boxes). However, that does not address the issue at hand, which is, what to do with images that have been previously uploaded without a license, or uploaded with an improper license. --(WT-en) Wandering 14:20, 5 February 2008 (EST)

<plants hand on face, drags it down slowly, takes deep breath>

The user does "agree that the work is free of copyright and that he/she agrees to release it under a clearly specified common cause license" — that's precisely what the text on Special:Upload quoted above in big bold letters means.

Can you please explain to me why you feel that the wording of A) is sufficient for this permission, and the wording of B) is not? Or should we delete all text ever written on Wikivoyage as well? (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:58, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Also, let me spell out once more that any images that are copyright violations or are reasonably suspected of being copyright violations must be deleted. But whenever a user uploads a file, that user has certified that it's available under a compatible Free license, and we have to AssumeGoodFaith — in precisely the same way that we presume text contributions to be innocent until proven guilty. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:41, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Have you actually read the article you point to above (AssumeGoodFaith)? It makes for interesting reading even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the context in which you have quoted it. Lots of good stuff there. Some extracts:

Sometimes you really are being ribbed the wrong way (pun intended). Even so, it is still better to assume good faith — the question is not one of accurate perception, but of appropriate action. It may be more helpful to see the other person as a challenge to overcome rather than a personal enemy to be vanquished.

However, some times a person's goals may directly interfere with your life. They could be in direct competition with you, and there could be a limited number of resources. You may disagree at some fundamental level of morality. You could have something they want. They could even be completely unreasonable, knowing they have some sort of power over you, like a spammer that subverts technology against you. Conversely, you might engage in strategic conflicts to get what you want. PoliticalAction is almost by definition this kind of adversarial approach in the West. Remember to not make these conflicts personal, and never engage in conflicts that will accomplish nothing. Don't win a PyrrhicVictory by burning bridges you may have to cross in the future.

Well, worth a read. Clearly, I don't want a conflict with you. I was being tendentious and irrational well before you entered the conversation with your "I'm starting to get pissed off" remark. But, in the spirit of the article, I'll withdraw the remark you got so upset about. I don't really care what you think of my arguments (I am pretty close to being as long in the tooth as (WT-en) 2old so young whippersnappers don't easily bother me). Now, if you are willing to tone down your shrillness (what's with all that comprende? and "let me spell it out" and entering a discussion with "I'm starting to get pissed off") we may actually get somewhere toward a consensus on what to do with all those images out there. If, that is, you care about a consensus. --(WT-en) Wandering 14:20, 5 February 2008 (EST)

You accuse me of not caring about consensus and having no responsibility towards licensing. Now, I disagree with you very strongly about this topic, but have I personally attacked you? (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:58, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Currently I am in favor of Jani's last two proposals 2)* Special:Upload is modified to have the same license pulldown as Shared. * 3)After these changes are done, any new untagged images will be tagged with "don't know" and listed for VFD. And I would like it completed ASAP. However keeping unlicensed images does not set well with me at this point and I would like to se further discussion. Many may not agree, but take it from an older (in age) contibutor, this site is very new and if it is accepted by the travel community as I think it will be (Route 66 looks dead), it will be around a long time. Lets work towards making it as unquestionable as we can with the content. People are always looking for an opportunity, someone could actually set us up under the current situation and calmly wait for an opening to sue. Lets close any loopholes. This is not the voice of paranoia, but experience with opportunists. On another point, Jani, you may want to inform Evan that some of us appreciate him and the wife founding this site and participating in discussions in the early days and until he and the current owner split. They retained ownership of the rights to publish and contributors keep adding to the value of this site with very limited input from Evan. I for one would welcome his comments more in these debates, for the benefit of all. As with Thomas A. Edison, who also was an Ohio native, Wikivoyage is not his last invention (we hope) as with Edison who went on to found General Electric did not stop with the long lasting light bulb, nor the repeating telegraph key which was one of his earlier works. (WT-en) 2old 12:09, 5 February 2008 (EST)

It looks to me as though license tags are causing a great deal of confusion. We should probably get rid of them.

All images without image tags are CC-by-sa 1.0. This is stated very very clearly in the upload form, and has been for 5 years.

If for some reason we decide to keep the license tags then we should immediately add cc-by-sa tags to images for which the tags are missing as so to avoid future confusion. -- (WT-en) Mark 13:02, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Greetings all, I just want to voice my support of the view that uploaders of images without tags have declared (by using the site) that all contributions are licensed under CC-by-SA 1.0 and as they have declared that, they also agree per the terms of the CC-by-SA 1.0 license that the materials they have submitted are available under CC-by-SA 1.0 or do not infringe on the proprietary rights of another person. Thus, there's no need to delete any images without a CC-by-SA 1.0 tag, unless you truly expect it to by a copyvio. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 13:32, 5 February 2008 (EST)

I was accused by (WT-en) jpatokal of conflating the two issues (cc-by-sa>1.0 and unlicensed) so I went back and looked at this rather long and Hamlet-ian thread (to delete or not to delete, that is the question) and, would you believe it, the scream was right! If only he would talk like a normal person perhaps I would have heard him earlier. So, going back to first principles, here is my position:

cc-by-sa->1.0 images. "Keep" We should delete them because we've been giving the impression that they are not legit, but, I don't see how wikivoyage can be legally called to task for a choice that the user has made when uploading (our responsibility to the downstream user) or why the uploading user would care (our responsibility to the contributing user). On rereading, I see that we got tangled in definitions of derivative and collective work because (WT-en) Peterfitzgerald has been using these images in the Project:Wikivoyage Press Chicago guide (are there many of these in the Singapore guide as well, that might explain the anger) and the definitions of derivative and collective work. But, that is the business of a downstream user and, as long as wikivoyage ensures that the licenses are appropriate, no business of ours. Any images added to a wikivoyage article would, it seems, qualify as a "collective work" and we should be able to combine images with different licenses on the same page after appropriately modifying the 'content is available under' rider at the bottom of the page. That should be sufficient even though wikivoyage has been combining them as a collective work and displaying an incorrect licensing statement at the bottom of the page. An important caveat is how we do this because it is setting a precedent for misuse down the road.

Again, I find myself thoroughly misunderstood, misrepresented, and wrongfully and ignorantly maligned. To repeat, the >1.0 images used in the Wikivoyage guide are totally irrelevant to any decision made on this site. I believe we at Wikivoyage Press have the right to do so, provided we properly note licensing and attribution, and I have WTP's support in this. A dumb decision here simply doesn't bear one iota on the images in the book. But again, that is a separate issue from this one, which is even more clear cut.

My motivation in making the arguments I have about what images we may keep stems from my desire to make Wikivoyage the most effective open-content travel guide possible, and simply to see that logic and clear-headed understanding prevails against stubborn ignorance. If frustration came across in my arguments, it was simply because I felt that the points I made were not sufficiently addressed in the cascading responses, as my points (and the issues being discussed) were not understood by discussants. That would be a good time for clarification, which I was trying to provide. I got angry because you, Wandering, were repeatedly implying in bad faith that my arguments should be discounted according to a very incorrect and insulting perception on your part that I had a conflict of interest in the matter. I do not, and the fact that you continue in this line of personal attack further demonstrates that you do not understand the licensing issues being discussed, do not understand what I have argued, and are generally bringing down the level of discourse. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk

unlicensed images. "Delete" I am uneasy about keeping images that have not been explicitly released with a free license by the uploading user. Wikivoyage has followed the practice of deleting them for quite a while (See: Project:Votes_for_deletion/May_2006, Project:Votes_for_deletion/June_2006 and presumably many others) and I don't see why we should suddenly decide we need to keep them. --(WT-en) Wandering 14:52, 5 February 2008 (EST)

I hope you don't take this badly, but I simply must disagree. We have been very clear from the begining that anyhthing uploaded here is under the CC-by-sa 1.0 unless otherwise indicated. I simply don't understand why this isn't clear. -- (WT-en) Mark 15:41, 5 February 2008 (EST)

(I don't take anything badly, I just find it hard talking to angry people.) If it was so clear then why were we deleting unlicensed images all along? A quick look at the deletion archives seems to show that deleting unlicensed images was a no-brainer. Anyway, I do think that there is a difference when a user explicitly makes a selection (of the license as well as indicating that there are no copyright issues) versus when the selection is implicit. That is one reason why many websites have the Agree/Disagree check box that users check off. --(WT-en) Wandering 16:08, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Can you point out what images have been deleted in the past for the sole reason of not having a license tag? I just looked through both Project:Votes_for_deletion/May_2006, Project:Votes_for_deletion/June_2006 and as far as I can see all deleted images are suspected copyvios, duplicates, advertisements or violate privacy rights. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:58, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Keep all images with no license marked. -- (WT-en) Colin 19:12, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Keep. This seems cut-and-dry to me. It's made clear - right out front and out loud, not buried in fine print - that anything uploaded here is under CC-by-SA 1.0. We don't require people to tag the text they enter in these here boxes, and we all seem content with the implicit understanding there. Some admins here do an impressive job of catching mis-licensed copyvio photos, but this ain't that. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 23:01, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Jeez Louise. I'll start by saying that I whole-heartedly agree with everything Jpatokal has said. While I give 203.144.143.4 kudos for actually getting more of a conversation to take place about this than we've been able to in a while, as Jani says, the VFD page isn't the place to do it... clogging it with all these images isn't really helping solve our problems.

I'll pitch in my support of the Special:Upload text, I agree it will cover us in the event of an unlikely lawsuit, and I vote to keep anything uploaded without a license for reasons specified by Jani and others, with the obvious exceptions of copyvios, etc.

Re: >1.0 images, what a couple users here seem to be taking as a given is that 2.0 and 3.0 images are improperly licensed.... this has been discussed many times, and we clearly don't have a consensus that that's the case... we're still figuring out if they are compatible with us and beyond that whether we can and should upgrade our whole site to 3.0 and beyond, so the real debate should be getting to the bottom of that, rather than jumping the gun and vfd'ing those before a consensus is reached.

As for automatically tagging images, we've discussed it in a few places, I've been pushing for a while to figure out how to either default to 1.0 on the pull down menu in Special:Upload so that if anyone desire other than 1.0 they have to take action, OR to leave it as "select a license" and give them a non-ignorable error message to select a license before it will let them upload. Either way, I'd like it if it wasn't even possible to not select a license or to select an incompatible license, just as a double reassurance.

Lastly, if I can defend Jani for a moment, I do slightly understand his agitation... we've been slowly discussing all of this calmly in several spots around the site, and the mass vfd'ing of images like this was more than a little sassy, especially given the vfd'ers awareness of those other conversations, Jani wasn't jumping into a conversation agitated, this conversation has been ongoing for a long time in some form or another. But, to come full circle, I'm glad 203.144.143.4 sparked the conversation that he was trying to spark, and I'm glad we're nearing a consensus – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 00:17, 6 February 2008 (EST)

A quote from Jani above: Wikivoyage Shared has different wording in the upload box plus a license selector that forces the user to explicitly choose a license, and there was a fairly lengthy argument there as well about what to do with untagged images. But, they continue to vfd untagged photos. Why is that and should both site not ne the same? And, for those getting angry, when I was much younger someone informed me that anger was a form of temporary insanity, after I pondered and reflected on that for many moons, I had to agree. (WT-en) 2old 09:32, 6 February 2008 (EST)

The logic — which I don't personally entirely agree with, mind you — is that on Shared the user can easily select a license from the pulldown, and if he doesn't, then he doesn't know/understand licensing in the first place and the picture is suspect. But on en:, there's no obvious way to tag images at all. (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:52, 6 February 2008 (EST)

And I agree that en: should be upgraded to use Shared's system. However, this discussion is about what to do with the old images. (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:52, 6 February 2008 (EST)

Jani's proposal to reform the :en system is sensible. Mass deleting images which clearly were uploaded in accordance with our copyleft, at a time when awareness of licensing documentation was lower among our contributors than it is today is not. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:39, 6 February 2008 (EST)

Wow, this discussion turned into a real barn-burner. With passions running pretty high it might be good for everyone to step back and look at the star articles, featured articles, (WT-en) maps, and other great things here and remember how much fun it can be to work together on travel articles instead of arguing about contentious issues like licensing.

That said, with regards to the current debate, my take on it is that existing images on en: with no license are fine - it's only been in the past year or two that we asked people to specify licenses, and before that all images were considered implied CC-SA due to the text on the Special:Upload page (see my first talk page comment for this same discussion in 2005...). It probably makes sense now that we have shared: to redirect upload links on en: to shared:, which would prevent this sort of confusion in the future. With regard CC-SA > 1.0, I think it's clear that the spirit of the license is that any version of CC-SA is fine, although the letter of the license doesn't state that; it's probably worthwhile trying to start a separate discussion about mass-updating the site to CC-SA 1.0+ - I'm sure we're not the first site to be faced with this issue, so it would probably be easy to dig up precedents from other sites on how it could be done. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:34, 6 February 2008 (EST)

On 02/04/2008 Jani said:So. I'm going to propose that we do the following:

• All old untagged images are tagged CC by-sa 1.0 and removed from VFD (unless there are other reasons to suspect they're copyvio etc).
• Special:Upload is modified to have the same license pulldown as Shared.
• After these changes are done, any new untagged images will be tagged with "don't know" and listed for VFD.

All in favor? Jpatokal 23:12, 4 February 2008

And the problem goes on. And, (WT-en) Wandering seems to have wandered off (darn it). I am in favor of Jani's suggestion and would like to see it implemented ASAP with one change. The suggestion to add a check box, saying they understand and accept the terms, should be included. You should always try to create a situation that is not arguable. In addition, the text regarding images being sent to shared, should be in red, bold, larger print, so even an old, blind, dummy, like me can not miss it. Then, they can not ARGUE that they did not see it, without being required to take an eye test before driving or contributing images to Wikivoyage. (WT-en) 2old 10:59, 15 February 2008 (EST)

I've altered the box on Special:Upload, can you read it now old man?  :) – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 22:37, 15 February 2008 (EST)

For some reason, I intuitively knew that you would be involved in the resolution of this problem. What you have done is a good start. Now, how about the check box to confirm the contributors action on how the image is licensed. I will see that you get a 10% raise in your Wikisalary. (WT-en) 2old 10:35, 16 February 2008 (EST)

Whether a checkbox or forcing the selection of a license in the pulldown menu, I agree it would be nice to force one of the two, I'd vote for the latter as with a checkbox it's still possible then to not select a license. However that's not something (I don't think) that we can implement, I think it's something Kevin at IB would have to figure out... and we should probably move all of the pieces of this vfd discussion somewhere else soon... and maybe start a tech request for a non-ignorable error message if a license isn't selected. And furthermore, as I've suggested in the past, I think special:upload on all language versions should redirect straight to shared – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 13:02, 16 February 2008 (EST)

I've been staying out of this debate, but will chime in now to say I'd support Jani's suggestions. (WT-en) Pashley 08:59, 11 March 2008 (EDT)

I've also stayed out of this for a number of reasons, but I fully support Jani's suggestion. I'll clean up the untagged images vfd later todaysometime this week, by tagging them cc-by-sa-1.0 and archiving the vfd. It seems totally legal since the it was explicitly stated on the upload page that all content will become cc-by-sa-1.0. --(WT-en) Nick 09:10, 11 March 2008 (EDT)