This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:
Welcome to the Wikipedia and thanks for pointing out and correcting the "acute" letter (circled U) and the ordering of the hacek letters in Czech alphabet. You were right, of course! -- Matt Borak 23:21, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Wow, an interesting choice of a language (I've read your reply)! :) Just one small technical: I noticed your changes to the QBasic programming language. When moving a page, please use the "Move this page" link instead of cutting and pasting the text, as it also moves the page history and discussion (see Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page). Thank you and have a good day! -- Matt Borak 09:49, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I understand your concern about the "click" text. But, doesn't "Click image for description" or "Click image to enlarge" make it very clear that there is an image that must be clicked on? They aren't just random "click here" captions with no context. They say to click on the image. If I'm using a text-only browser and read "Click image for description" it's clear that it's referring to an unrendered image. Are you saying that the text itself should be a link? --Minesweeper 21:10, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)
Reason for HTML's irrelevancy
Why do you say HTML entities for colon and semicolon are irrelevant? - Omegatron 21:27, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)
The numeric HTML entities for colon and semicolon are highly irrelevant, because they are never, ever used. In fact, the only time I have ever seen a numeric entity used for either of these is in the Template:Punctuation_marks box, and that's only because Wikipedia attaches a special meaning to a colon, not because the HTML needed it for any reason. You can represent the character A in HTML by typing A, but no one ever does, because it's never necessary or useful. The same goes for the numeric entities for the colon and the semicolon. —Bkell 21:35, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Right... But I needed to know it in order to put it in the punctuation box, and the information wasn't on WP. :-) I figured that was reason enough to include it. Maybe it should just mention that HTML entities are the same number as ASCII for letters and punctuation? - Omegatron 21:38, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)
I don't know anything about png. I made the map using Paint. Feel free to convert it to what ever you like. Incidentally, "procrastinate" is an intransitive verb. Adam 09:19, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining that to me. I doubt I will remember any of it though. You need to remember that while people of my generation can be taught to perform certain functions, we rarely understand what we are doing, having been raised in the pre-computer world. (When I was your age computers filled entire rooms and were programmed by men in white coats using punch cards.) I didn't deliberately save the map as a bmp or a jpg or a gif, I just made it and saved it and uploaded up, so I'm pleased that I turn out to have done the right thing. I do use Irfanview for editing photos and I've sometimes wondered why the files are so much smaller when they have been edited with it, and now I know.
Anyway I'm glad you like my maps, they're a hobby of mine. See the country files at my website.
The OED says that the transitive use of procrastinate is "now rare," and I've certainly never seen it before. Whatever the practice in the US, here in the English-speaking world I think it is considered ungrammatical.
I would like to express our (collective) great gratitude to all Wikipedians who correct grammatical errors and unidiomatic expressions from pages where ESL-wikipedians have put their mark on the prose. Some foreigners' English is worse than others' — this is not politically correct to state, but I do it anyways — and that of Finns belong to the worst. Thank you! Thank you very much!
Hiya. I'm running a bot (with 30-second wait intervals) on your User:Bkell/Orphaned images page that deletes the images we no longer want. You can delete the page when it's finished. — Timwi 13:34, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
I just wanted to say, I share your burning hate for JPEGs that should obviously have been PNGs. I once found an image on Wikipedia that was (no kidding) a scan of a document printed from Word, and it was a JPEG! I also recently found a giant two-colour logo that needed to be converted from JPEG to PNG (cleaning up artifacts isn't too hard with the magic wand tool). I will try to handle some of the ones you've listed, but please, if you find more, list them too. Such images must be abolished. Derrick Coetzee 00:55, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I wanted to ask your expert opinion on GIF files for black & white diagrams, since this is what I have always used (having been told GIF is better than JPEG for this purpose). This is prompted by the fact that I have just signed a legal document allowing me to be a webmaster for an organisation, and it states that I can ONLY use JPEG or GIF. Is there a problem with older browsers not being able to read PNG files? Having read your comments I switched over to PNG in place of GIF on pages like copper(II) chloride, yet I wonder if I should switch back? In tests I did, both GIF and PNG files came out as approximately the same size.
By the way, I hope that acenaphthylene isn't your last chemistry contribution! :) We had "High School Science Day" here at our college a while back, with use of indigo dye as one experiment, and the Wikipedia page on indigo dye that you rewrote was a major source of background information for me!
I changed the jpg UNL logo to a png. You have orphaned a second file: File:USA ne UNLlogo.jpg
Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:
Option 1
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}
OR
Option 2
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}
Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)
Erdosville
Thanks for your help with cleaning up the article a bit. Your work is appreciated. TheChief(PowWow) 21:26, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
PhotoLoader
I moved Photo loader to PhotoLoader per your comments on WP:RM. You kind of indicated that you weren't sure but that Photo loader was clearly wrong. By that logic, PhotoLoader was less wrong. Let me know if that wasn't what you wanted (from the absence of comments, I don't think anyone else is likely to care). –Hajor 19:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure if i agree with this edit. It seems that since the phrase "fhqwhgadshgnsdhjsdbkhsdabkfabkveybvf" is a used in place of a proper name in the e-mail, and written in all lowercase letters, the correct title would reflect that fact. Just like, for example, timecop. Whatever though, I really don't care enough about it to be risk being listed on WP:LAME. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 05:39, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
PNG vs. JPG
Thanks for your note about changing the image Image:Cherokee-syllabary.jpg to a a PNG file. But I'm curious...what is the difference between the files? I'm not really a technical person when it comes to things like that. Thanks! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 05:12, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation! It was most helpful! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 05:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
The source I got the image from had it as a JPEG, if I converted it to PNG format, I don't think it would make any positive change. I will look around for a better quality image, though. Thanks. Ouuplas 22:28, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
I just realized that the two images you used as examples that were wrongly tagged {{badJPEG}} were your own. I apologize if I offended you in some way, but I don't think that calling for the template to be deleted altogether because I made a couple mistakes was the appropriate response. —Bkell 06:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I wasn't offended, and I assure you that I didn't nominate the template for deletion for any personal reasons. I used those images as examples because I noticed them on my watchlist. (That's how I learned of this template's existence.) I nominated the template for deletion because it appears as though it's being indiscriminately applied (both in wording and practice) to all non-photographic JPEG images. (I have only two on my watchlist, and both were tagged, so I find it difficult to believe that you "made a couple mistakes" when rapidly tagging over 1,800 images.) As I said, many of these images undoubtedly are from JPEG sources (and cannot be visually improved). If an existing image can be saved more efficiently as a PNG or SVG file, why not simply perform the conversion (instead of tagging it and waiting for someone else to do the real work)? —Lifeisunfair 07:18, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
The reason is that none of the images that can be tagged can simply be resaved as a PNG or SVG file. That would defeat the entire purpose, since the JPEG compression artifacts would still be there, and the resulting file size would always be greater. In order to fix these JPEGs, someone has to either find that the original image was a GIF or PNG, and upload that instead, or get out some graphics software and redraw the image themselves. This is not a trivial task. Mysid has been doing some excellent work over the past few days redrawing JPEGs in SVG format, and I've done a few myself, although the best I can do with the software I have is to redraw them as PNGs. The {{badJPEG}} tag exists for the same reason the {{Cleanup-image}} tag does: the actual cleanup process will take a while, and in many cases whoever tags the image does not have the resources to do the cleanup work themselves.
In response to your other concern, as you noted I have tagged about 1,800 images in the past week. I am currently going through the Logos category and finding inappropriate JPEGs there (I'm somewhere in the middle of the C's). Nearly all of the images in that category that are in JPEG format would be happier as PNGs, but there are a few that I have skipped because I felt that JPEG is the best choice: Image:05 WSOP logo edited.jpg, Image:103 qvgd millions.jpg, Image:114203.jpg, Image:17N-manifesto.jpg, Image:2005 wsop logo.jpg, Image:2005poster.jpg, Image:20th Television.jpg, Image:320kidzone.jpg, and so on, and we aren't even close to the letter A yet. So I have tried not to indiscriminately apply this tag to all JPEGs that are not photographs. But I am only human, after all, and what I'm doing isn't especially exciting, so occasionally I find that I've zoned out for the past few images. Maybe it was during one of those periods I tagged both of your images (they would have been right next to each other in the list, you know).
More likely what happened was something like this: Let's look at Image:Call for Help US.jpg. The orange square that contains the C does have a bunch of gradients and different colors, but on a quick glance I might have thought it was two big blocks of different shades of orange separated by that little squiggle. The same for the big blue square that contains HELP: in a quick glance I probably saw maybe eight or nine different shades of blue there, sharply separated, and missed the subtle gradients. So it's a more complex image than I originally saw, and that's why it was tagged. My two-second evaluation of the image was incorrect.
I would invite you to take a look at Category:Images with inappropriate JPEG compression if you haven't already, and see the images that have been tagged. You will see that the vast majority need to be redrawn. Images like the two you presented are exceptions, and were tagged because I made a mistake. The template itself is still valuable tool for identifying areas of Wikipedia that need improvement. —Bkell 18:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
The reason is that none of the images that can be tagged can simply be resaved as a PNG or SVG file. That would defeat the entire purpose, since the JPEG compression artifacts would still be there, and the resulting file size would always be greater.
The part about the compression artifacts is correct, but the part about the file size is not; it often would be increased in a straight conversion, but not "always." For example, see this image. I just converted it to a PNG file (without performing any other edits), and this reduced the file size by 49.6%.
In order to fix these JPEGs, someone has to either find that the original image was a GIF or PNG, and upload that instead,
Why would someone have converted a GIF file or PNG file to the JPEG format before uploading it?
or get out some graphics software and redraw the image themselves.
For the entries that I'm seeing in this category, that simply isn't a valid option (because they're copyrighted images from official sources).
So it's a more complex image than I originally saw, and that's why it was tagged. My two-second evaluation of the image was incorrect.
Perhaps you should spend more than two seconds evaluating each image. :)
I would invite you to take a look at Category:Images with inappropriate JPEG compression if you haven't already, and see the images that have been tagged. You will see that the vast majority need to be redrawn.
Again, logos should not be redrawn. —Lifeisunfair 20:37, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I guess not "always." Perhaps that was hyperbole. Even if the file size is reduced, though, conversion to PNG won't get rid of any compression artifacts in the JPEG.
I don't know why people convert things to JPEGs, but it happens. Maybe they took a screenshot instead of just saving the image, and they saved the screenshot as a JPEG. Or maybe they have some mistaken idea that it would be better to convert the image to a JPEG, because JPEG always preserves colors better than GIF (which is generally true for things like photos, due to GIF's color depth limitations) or that JPEG is the "preferred" format for Wikipedia (which is not true). And even if the user performed no conversion, there still might be an "original" image in GIF or PNG format. For example, a corporation might have its logo in JPEG format on some Web pages and in GIF format on others.
I still don't understand why people insist that logos should not be redrawn. If a logo is redrawn by a Wikipedian to make the image clearer or the file size smaller, but the resolution is not changed, I don't see how this can affect the fair use status of the image. (In fact, I'm not even sure that the resolution of the image has anything to do with "fair use," but I'll play along.) And the JPEG compression artifacts that are present in a logo in JPEG format are obviously not part of the logo, so losing them is fine.
Frankly, I'm of the opinion that logos don't belong on Wikipedia at all, because I don't see what they add to articles, and they are certainly copyrighted and so invite intellectual property hassles. But the existence of thousands of them is a good indicator that I've been outvoted, so I won't fight that. If we're going to have them, though, we should get the crispest, cleanest versions we can. —Bkell 21:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
By "redrawn," do you mean "cleaned up and saved in a different file format" or do you mean "replicated from scratch"? The former is perfectly fine (in my assessment), and I was under the impression that we were discussing the latter. —Lifeisunfair 23:29, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Excellent improvement of the wording of the template. —Bkell 23:08, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! :) —Lifeisunfair 23:29, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
PNG depths
Greetings. You asked about PNG depths at User talk:Dcoetzee#PNG color depths, which I happen to be watching. The PNG spec itself [1] says palette index options can be 1,2,4,8 bits per pixel. If you can't seem to get 2 bits per pixel then, yes, the limitation is in your software. You might want to try alternatives like The GIMP [2], which is free, reasonably powerful, and cross-platform. Also helpful are free PNG tools like OptiPNG. --KSmrqT 03:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
PNG Policy
I disagree with your taggging File:Barcoding-Inc.jpg as bad because its JPG. You are cluttering up the page with a useless message. Please show me the Wikipedia policy page that says you should do this.
What am I supposed to do? I have neither the financial interest, nor the skill to redraw somebody else's corporate logo. Jehochman 14:29, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
OK, I asked the company, and they sent me a PNG right away. How friendly. Now we can both be happy. Jehochman 21:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks
Thanks for the recognition, I like doing the work, too. I'm taking a 4-week vacation now during which I won't have access to a powerful enough computer to do image manipulation. But keep up the work. –Mysid 14:44, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
no license notified
Since my purpose on Wikipedia is to disseminate knowledge and not to police the doings of other Wikipedians, I am at a loss here. Help me out, what is the labelling you want that will make the images appropriate? Chris 23:26, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Web-screenshot
I've tagged Image:Alisoncheney.jpg as {{software-screenshot}}, but I'm not sure that's appropriate either. I note that Flash-animated characters like Homestar Runner are also tagged as {{web-screenshot}}, and I would argue that is the closest thing we have to it. I would, of course, welcome any suggestions. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 00:51, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Image: Backround2.jpg
I don't really know what other thing to use besides fairuse, so if that doesn't cut it, either ask the web site for permission or delete (if there is no permission)--Zxcvbnm 02:52, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Buck Shaw Image
I'm going to retag it. While normally you'd be right, in this case that image was the whole webpage, hence the tag. The page consisted solely of that image as located here Buck Shaw. As you can see I took a screenshot of that page hence the crop of it.Gateman1997 19:14, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure how to change the metadata (other than deleting and reloading the image). It seems best to point en.wiki at the same Commons image used by fr.wiki - can you advise how best to do that? Dlyons493Talk 19:48, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
It's in the public domain - see on fr.wiki as above. It's sitting somewhere on Commons but I'm not sure how to reference it from there. thumb|right|340px|xxx doesn't seem to work. Dlyons493Talk 19:48, 31 December 2005 (UTC) Dlyons493 00:40, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I've done some checking on this and it seems to be less clearcut than I thought. The background is that I raised the question of copyright with the user Lisandru68 on fr.wikipedia when I was translating the article and he told me that the site [3] was his and that he had rights to the image. You'll see this in a section called Sundgau on http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Lisandru68/Archives. There's a previous section Licence des images where he was asked about copyright on other images in the article by Tipiac. So I was under the impression that the images at [4] (which becamed an Article de qualité over there) had all been cleared for copyright. I don't see any record though on Tipiac's pages around 22nd of June, 2005 that Lisandru68 actually answered him (but, if he didn't, wouldn't the images have been deleted?). How best to proceed with this? I can leave messages on their user pages on fr.wikipedia if that's any help. Dlyons493Talk
I've contacted Lisandru68 and asked if he really has copyright and is prepared to put it in the public domain. Dlyons493Talk 19:25, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I haven't heard anything back. The image on fr.wiki is copyright with permission which I interpret as permission for all wiki's rather than just fr.wiki. I'll put a 'fair use' tag on it I think and if anyone objects we can just delete th image. Dlyons493Talk
Erdal
Ah, what would you suggest? Erdal is unlikely to object to their german shoe polish getting a plug. The image came from their website, indicated in Shoe polish. I see that you don't like the category I gave it, but you give me no clue as to what you would accept. Have you visited Carhenge? Metarhyme 20:50, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
How about {{Promotional}} - for an image freely provided to promote an item, as in a promotional photo in a press packet? It's an accurate description - would that suit you? Didn't like the bouncing ball, I see. Carhenge can't be that far away! Metarhyme -- it's retagged so: {{Promotional}}
Web-screenshot tag
I've noticed you've uploaded some images tagged with {{web-screenshot}}. This tag is not meant to be used for images that came from Web pages; it's meant to be used for images of Web pages (such as Image:Wikipedia.PNG, for example). I've retagged the images below as having no license information. Please edit the image description pages to include information about the licenses these images are under. —Bkell 06:28, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I did misunderstand the tag originally. I have relabled it as "fair use in" as the image is used on multiple webpages that reference the playwright. Doc 02:44, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks I've amended the tag on the other two as well Doc 15:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by my using the wrong tag on the image I uploaded it. As per the Wikipedia policy I cited the source I got it from.
Apologies for not doing it correctly.Mike 23:26, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
What tag do you think I should use? Kingjeff 23:36, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Can I use the fact that there is no intended profit on either for either the website owner or wikipedia? Kingjeff 00:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi, first I'm sorry if I'm answering you in the wrong place. Well, that image was taken by me from the website that is linked in the article (Karnak (band)). The website owner probably took the image from the band's official website, that is no longer active (neither the website neither the band). So, I assume the band paid for someone to do the drawing and thus it is copyrighted... but as I think this kind of use does no harm to the artist, I think I can use it... if I'm wrong, please, tell me. Thanks! Ultranol 18:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I forgot to sign the comment above... :( Thanks for the explanation about the copyright. I'll fix it soon. Ultranol 18:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm having difficulty finding the right tag. The images were mione or used with permission. Please help.evrik 17:12, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
You added the BadJPEG template to this. However, I don't think it fits since it doesn't contain material that could be easily changed into a vector. As I understand it BadJPEG is for images that are simple enough that some skilled user can convert them into vectors using Adobe Illustrator or somesuch. Could you review that images and maybe remove the tag? Thanks. grenグレン 08:26, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I never used web-screenshot for any of my Digimon images, someone altered the copyright tag. I have used the fair use tag, as Kudamon1.jpg and Kyukimon.jpg were created from scans of Bandai Japan's Digimon cards. If fair use is not the appropriate tag either, I would love to hear your suggestions. Qilinmon
Web-screenshot tag
I uploaded a new image for Image:Betadine.jpg - it's a screenshot with the browser stuff cropped out. The net effect is a lower resolution image then if I just uploaded a copy of the picture from the web site. This begs the newbie question - why bother? If a screenshot of a web page is fair use why can't we use one picture from a web site for illustrative purposes and count that as fair use? Zaui 17:55, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. Makes sense. Now, how do I remove the image? Zaui 19:47, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Neowin image concerns
Hi, you recently sent me a main page screenshot122605.png message on my talk page concerning an image I uploaded for the neowin article. The reason why the image was not in the article at the time was because a user was maliciously reverting the article back to a poorer version of the page which did not include the current screenshot. If you want to see more information about that, please see Talk:Neowin. The article has been reverted to the better page, and now has both images up (representing Neowin's present and future looks). Please make sure that the image is not deleted. It was difficult for me to make as I had to manually tie the pieces together and it is now being used in the article once again.
[edit]To clarify, I added the image you marked for replacement recently to show how the website is currently. The older image is one of how Neowin is going to look with the next site revision. Both images are now used in the article, but Doom127 kept reverting the page back the page to a much less developed version.[/edit]
On my talk page, you pointed out my error in the {{web-screenshot}} template and showed me how to find a copyright or nominate it for deletion. I couldn't find the copyright information on the IMDb; although it is not entirely desirable that an image I uploaded should be deleted, I understand and agree, therefore you may delete it however you like, or (as I said on my talk page) simply let it delete itself. Please let me know how it is deleted when it is deleted - that is all I ask.
