[Wiki Loves Monuments] WLM photos are deleted on Commons

Sun Sep 18 07:36:13 UTC 2016

Hi Isaac,

Thanks for pointing this out. I'm the WLM organiser for Malta, so I will
try to clarify this with User:James John Borg. I don't know this user
personally (despite our shared last name!), but I will try to find a way to
contact them. For what it's worth, both James John Borg and Joshua Schembri
are fairly common names in Malta, so I would assume that they are two
different people, but that wouldn't automatically exclude the possibility
of James John Borg having taken the photos.

Best,
Neville

On Sun, 18 Sep 2016 at 09:26 olatunde olalekan isaac <
reachout2isaac at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan/WLM/possible_copyright_problem.
>>>  It works for us.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Nahid Sultan
>>>
>>> User:NahidSultan <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NahidSultan> on
>>> all Wikimedia Foundation
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation>'s public wikis
>>>
>>> Secretary, Wikimedia Bangladesh
>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh>
>>>
>>> Twitter: @nahidunlimited <https://twitter.com/nahidunlimited>
>>>
>>> http://blog.nahidsultan.xyz/
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *From:* WikiLovesMonuments
>>> <wikilovesmonuments-bounces at lists.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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>>>
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>>
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>>
>>
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