Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

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It's not even a new user issue. I've been an editor for going on 5 years, and I still get templated and reverted on inconsequential edits.

Case in point: I recently edited this picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turing_Machine_in_Golly.pn...

It's a screenshot of the 6 octillionth generation of a Turing Machine built in Conway's Game of Life, using the GPL'd program Golly. The previous image contained Windows GUI elements (title bar, etc) which are non-free and cannot be used on WP when a free alternative exists. So I cropped it and uploaded the edited image.

Within minutes, I had received a template on my (seldom-visited) commons talk page informing me that I had uploaded a file without specifying its license, and that it would be deleted. Take a look at the "Permission" field on that image: "See LICENSE.TXT distributed with Golly for GPLv2 license"

Despite this (incredibly clear) assertion that the image was GPL'd, I received a warning that it would be deleted. Why? Because I hadn't included the "This image covered by the GPL" template that a) I didn't know existed, b) there was no mention of on the upload page, and c) is a wordier version of what I wrote in the license field.

As an experienced editor, I'm used to these stupid quibbles and time-wasting fights. I'll still contribute, although they are a large part of why I don't contribute more. As a new editor seeing this, however? I would have told them to fuck off, got banned for incivility, and never gone back.

There's an attitude among the regulars that Wikipedia is a treasured resource that must be defended against innumerable vandals, trolls, and spammers by a select cadre of noble volunteers. To an extent, they're right. But when you have such badges as "The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar" [1] being held up as the height of achievement for veteran editors, it engenders a culture that is exclusionary, if not actively hostile, towards new editors.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WikiDefender_Barnstar.png

Are you sure showing title bars isn't allowed? Almost all screenshots on Wikipedia include them, even for open source software. e.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Firefox11.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winscp_screenshot.png

Here's the full deal:

If you store your screenshot on English Wikipedia, non-free imagery is allowed when there's a rationale, which in this case would be "fair use". That's the decision of that community. I think you could store that screenshot as is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_screenshots

If you use Wikimedia Commons (a common media backend for all the Wikipedias and other projects), there are no exceptions; it's all free, all the time. Fair use is NOT allowed. The guidelines are here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Screenshots

On Commons, in theory, title bars and other OS windowing widgetry are okay if and only if it's a fully open source operating system.

In practice, most Commons volunteers are not insane, and don't care. I don't know of any case where Microsoft has sued someone for a screenshot that included a title bar, where there was no intent to deceive people or otherwise misuse their work.

But, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons tend to attract and enable a kind of person that values extreme consistency and rule-following over all other considerations. Someone who makes it their mission to eliminate all screenshots with titlebars probably won't be reined in.

I've had images with them included deleted before, which is why I modified the golly screenshot. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what's allowed, and I doubt many people who are not active commons contributors do, either.

Some editors went through and deleted a massive number of useful Mac/Windows screenshots several years ago, but I don't think there's ever been an actual policy stating these screenshots were a legal issue.

Also, the GPL only covers code, not program output (under normal circumstances), so I don't see how it applies to screenshots anyway.

>the GPL only covers code, not program output (under normal circumstances), so I don't see how it applies to screenshots anyway.

It's an interesting question. The drawing of the window is, I would argue, indistinguishable from the code. It's like saying the HTML, CSS, and images on a site are GPL'd, but screenshots aren't. The rest of the program output is merely algorithmic, and thus not subject to copyright.

This discussion is wandering off into la-la land. The GPL isn't designed to cover things like websites or bitmapped images. There's other 'free' content-oriented licenses which should be used instead.

It doesn't matter, the application of the "rules" (read: guidelines) is so arbitrary and capricious as to be entirely meaningless and unpredictable.

Did you use the defauly upload field or the upload wizard? The wizard fixes many of the "missing license" issues by prompting the selection of a license - but I forget if the GPL is included there.

I always forget those tags - which do need to exist to explain the license (I'll give them that) - and there is no obvious resource listing all the relevant templates.

No one cares when I raise those issues though; anyone able to make "decisions" were newbies far too long ago to recognise a problem.

I wrote most of UploadWizard. It defaults to Creative Commons licenses, usually.

There is a way to use the GPL but you need to specify that you want a custom license, and enter it using wikitext. In this case the community's standard practice is to use the incantation "{{Free screenshot|GPL}}".

Unfortunately even UploadWizard doesn't help the problem here, because it doesn't help with image edits and what Wiki culture calls a "reupload". (This was a deliberate choice.)

For what it's worth, I care about the issues you raise. The real solutions require a total rethink about how Wikipedia keeps track of image metadata, though.

The community has different priorities at the moment, largely because they have inadequate tools to police the wikis, and this is why they get a bit trigger-happy on the revert button and written a lot of bots to complain about less-than-ideal edits. Most of them value encyclopedia quality far more than abstract niceties like "openness". I see it as a matter of not having the right tools to do both, though.

Thanks for your hard work. I'll be sure to look into UploadWizard the next time I need to upload a picture.

To be honest, even after 5 years of editing I had to google how to upload it. Wikipedia editing in general is rather obfuscated, but I find the Commons tasks that much more so due to my unfamiliarity with them.

I'm just sorry that two years after I was hired, we still have basically the same problems, as evidenced by your comments. It's partially the nature of MediaWiki to be impervious to usability enhancement, but we also made some poor choices in how we attacked the problem. I have to take some of the blame myself there.

Ha! Yes, sorry I probably shouldn't have used such a broad brush.

Some people do care deeply.

I'm just frustrated with Commons at the moment for other reasons, and took the opportunity for a childish jibe.

(good work on the UploadWizard :D)

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