[Wiki Loves Monuments] WLM photos are deleted on Commons

Sun Sep 18 07:26:00 UTC 2016

Dear all,

I stumbled across another participant, User:James John Borg
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/James_John_Borg>.
Looking at the metadata of their uploads
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/James_John_Borg>, it
shows that the copyright holder of the files is "* Joshua Schembri*". I
think the user is a participant from Malta. Do we have WLM organizer from
Malta willing to take this up?

Best,

Isaac.

On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 2:23 AM, Alexander Tsirlin <altsirlin at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Lodewijk,
>
> I find it a bit difficult to assume good faith when someone approaches me
> with a knife. I find it more natural to defend, and that's what we have to
> do now.
>
> I truly regret that Commons did not develop a more civil approach than
> submitting deletion requests on every possible occasion. Even if we assume
> that this is the reasonable course of action, it hardly makes sense for
> WLM, because only uploaders receive notifications about possible file
> deletion. The organizers have no idea about it, although they should be
> contacted in the first turn. Most of the uploaders are new users who do not
> speak English. What do you expect to hear from them?
>
> All photos related to WLM Russia contain a template saying:
>
> Please read the guidelines
> <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database_in_Russia>
> before making any changes that can affect the monuments database!
>
> If you actually read the guidelines, you will see the following:
>
> If you see a potential candidate for deletion, *inform us in the first
> place*. We will organize the file transfer and you will be able to delete
> the photo afterwards. Should you do it differently and nominate a WLM/WLE
> photo for deletion without informing us, this will be highly detrimental
> and disrespectful to our work. We don't like vandals.
>
> All these deletion requests are indeed highly disrespectful to our work.
> But they happen, and we have no other choice but to fight against that. And
> whet our knives, because we will likely need them.
>
> Sincerely,
> Alexander
>
>
>
>
> On 17.09.2016 12:17, Lodewijk wrote:
>
> Hey Alexander,
>
> Assuming good faith is always good - even if you have to work harder for
> it. It makes the interactions more pleasant and the work more fun. So I
> will always recommend to keep doing it - even if it goes against your
> natural response.
>
> The case where the names don't seem to match seems like a valid case to me
> to ask questions, and this process is (unfortunately) the process being
> used for that at Wikimedia Commons. It is uncomfortable, but it is what we
> have to deal with. Because there are so many pictures, there is a bunch to
> be expected.
>
> I'm not going to pretend that the Wikimedia Commons community is always
> easy or fun to work with - but their intentions are usually good. They are
> very tough on copyright, and very suspicious. While these are some
> disadvantages, it does allow us to use a lot of shared infrastructure, and
> makes competitions like this one possible on an international scale. Please
> do realise that the number of uploads typically raises with 30-100% during
> Wiki Loves Monuments, and this puts some stress/strain on the reviewers
> too.
>
> Best,
> Lodewijk
>
> 2016-09-17 8:58 GMT+02:00 Alexander Tsirlin <altsirlin at gmail.com>:
>
>> Rather than complaining to the process could you please for once think
>> that this is your project too and everyone in this together?
>>
>> It is not my project. Like many other people, I am forced to use it as a
>> common image repository, even though I emphatically do not want to. As you
>> probably know, before migrating to WMF servers Wikivoyage had its own image
>> repository, and we wanted to keep it, because it was much better organized
>> than Commons, and we did not want other people to impose their rules and
>> practices of "nominating everything for deletion" on images that we have
>> carefully collected ourselves.
>>
>> Unfortunately, our request was ignored by the WMF, so yes, we are also in
>> this strange thing that was supposed to be a common project, but is in fact
>> run by a handful of people who believe that unjustified and well-hidden
>> deletion requests are the best way to solve all problems. But it stinks,
>> and we try to be as far from it as possible.
>>
>> Your experience of license review for WLM Bangladesh might be interesting
>> if we would ever have time to do this. At the moment, I spend most of my
>> free time on finding and fighting these well-hidden deletion requests.
>> Thank you, my dear Commons community, for creating such a wonderful working
>> environment.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Alexander
>>
>>
>>
>> On 17.09.2016 11:32, Nahid Sultan wrote:
>>
>> Though it seems a bit odd but on a commons perspective it is also a
>> normal procedure. Commons has a huge issue with people finding images
>> online and then uploading them as their own work, so regular contributors
>> on commons can sometimes be overzealous in making sure that people actually
>> have the right to release what they are releasing. That is where the OTRS
>> system comes in. Rather than complaining to the process could
>> you please for once think that this is your project too and everyone in
>> this together?
>>
>>
>> We, from WLM Bangladesh team have created a work-board/list for such
>> users who have problem with metadata, previously published same image on
>> other media to make sure that they are actually own the copyright. we even
>> created a hand book for reviewers explaining what to look during the review
>> (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM). So, every
>> reviewer check for those mistakes when reviewing an image then if they
>> found such problematic user they immediately contact them via email or talk
>> page and list them on https://commons.wikimedia.o
>> rg/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM/possible_copyright_problem.  It works for
>> us.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Nahid Sultan
>>
>> User:NahidSultan <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan> on
>> all Wikimedia Foundation
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation>'s public wikis
>>
>> Secretary, Wikimedia Bangladesh
>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh>
>>
>> Twitter: @nahidunlimited <https://twitter.com/nahidunlimited>
>>
>> http://blog.nahidsultan.xyz/
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* WikiLovesMonuments <wikilovesmonuments-bounces at li
>> sts.wikimedia.org> <wikilovesmonuments-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org> on
>> behalf of Alexander Tsirlin <altsirlin at gmail.com> <altsirlin at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, September 17, 2016 11:09 AM
>> *To:* Wiki Loves Monuments Photograph Competition
>> *Subject:* Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] WLM photos are deleted on Commons
>>
>> Now it is not only about Freedom of Panorama and non-free images.
>>
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests
>> /Files_uploaded_by_VekaSpb
>> Here, one Commons user nominates a bunch of excellent photos for
>> deletion after he sees that the user name does not match the name in
>> EXIF, even though the connection between the two is pretty obvious. This
>> deletion request has been closed yesterday, but it still costed me a lot
>> of time and a long e-mail exchange with the uploader, where I tried to
>> convince her that everything is fine, and this deletion request was only
>> a mistake. Yes, just a small mistake, really...
>>
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests
>> /Files_uploaded_by_PhotoJinn
>> Here, the same user nominates for deletion some photos of a 13th century
>> cathedral claiming that there is no freedom of panorama. What???!
>>
>> ---------------------------------------
>>
>> That's a very systematic course of action against us taking place on
>> Commons. It would be silly to assume good faith here.
>>
>> Best,
>> Alexander
>>
>>
>>
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